ENGLISH 




ENGLISH 



READINGS'FOR 



SCHOOLS 



"On bokes for 

to rede I me 

delyte. ' 

Chaucer, 



€nglts(li i^eabmgs; Cor ^ci)ool£f 

GENERAL EDITOR 
WILBUR LUCIUS CROSS 

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN YALE UNIVERSITY 




Abraham Lincoln 

From a photograph taken soon after his nomination in 1860 



MACAULAY'S 
SPEECHES ON COPYRIGHT 

AND 

LINCOLN'S ADDRESS AT 
COOPER INSTITUTE 

WITH OTHER ADDRESSES AND LETTERS 



EDITED BY 
JAMES FLEMING HOSIC 

HEAD or THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH IN THE 
CHICAGO NORMAL COLLEGE 




NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

1915 






.1^3 



Copyright, igis, 

BY 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 



MAR 1 1 1915 
aA397062 



CONTENTS 

Introduction page 

I. The Study of the Speeches of Macaulay and Lincoln vii 

II. Thomas Babington Macaulay viii 

III. Abraham Lincoln xv 

Descriptive Bibliography xxvii 

Macaulay's Speeches on Copyright i 

The Speech of 1841 3 

The Speech of 1842 22 

Lincoln's Addresses and Letters 33 

In Reply to Stephen A. Douglas, delivered at Peoria, 

Illinois, October 16, 1854 35 

On the "Divided House," a speech delivered before the 
Repubhcan State Convention at Springfield, IlUnois, 

June 17, 1858 44 

From the Reply to Douglas in the Last Joint Debate, Al- 
ton, Illinois, October 15, 1858 54 

Address at Cooper Institute, New York City, February 27, 

i860 60 

Farewell to the Citizens of Springfield, February 11, 186 1 85 
Addresses delivered on the Journey to Washington, D. C, 

February 11 to 27, 1861 86 

Reply to an Address of Welcome at Indianapolis, In- 
diana, February 11, 186 1 86 

Address to the Legislature of New York, at Albany, 

N. Y., February 18, 1861 87 

Address to the Senate of New Jersey, at Trenton, Feb- 
ruary 21, 1861 89 

Address in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Feb- 
ruary 22, 1861 go 

First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861 . . . . 92 
Letter to William H. Seward, April i, 1861 . . .104 

Letter to General McClellan, February 3, 1862 . . 106 
v 



vi Contents 



PAGE 

Letter to Horace Greeley, August 22, 1862 . . . 107 
Letter to General Hooker, January 26, 1863 . . ,109 
Reply to a Committee from Chicago on the Emancipation 

Proclamation, September 13, 1862 . . . .111 
The Emancipation Proclamation, January I, 1863 . -115 
Reply to the Workingmen of Manchester, January 19, 1863 118 
Reply to J. C. Conkling, dated August 26, 1863 . .121 
Address at the Dedication of the National Cemetery at 

Gettysburg, November 19, 1863 
Letter to General Grant, April 30, 1864 
Letter to Mrs. Bixby, November 21, 1864 
Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865 
Last Public Address, April 11, 186 



. 126 

. 127 

. 128 

. 129 

, ._^ , .__^ 132 

Notes and Comment (including questions and topics for study) . 139 

Portrait of Abraham Lincoln Frontispiece 

Lincoln's Birthplace xxvi 

Portrait of Thomas Babington Macaulay .... 2 

St. Gaudens' Statue of Lincoln 34 



INTRODUCTION 



THE STUDY OF THE SPEECHES OF MACAULAY 
AND LINCOLN 

Recent years have witnessed a remarkable revival of 
interest in oral English. This is very gratifying, for speech 
is by far the most important single acquirement of man 
and it is the oral form of it that is generally used. Schools 
should, therefore, provide opportunity for much training 
in speech. This can not be done by means of writing but 
must be accomplished by actual speaking on congenial 
themes to interested and sympathetic audiences. 

As in the case of other arts, the art of speaking is con- 
ditioned largely by proper conceptions of speech. One 
must have ideals, must realize the possibilities. Through 
study of the achievements of others we may perfect our- 
selves. Only so can education shorten the period of ex- 
perimenting and bring the individual to assured control 
of his powers. 

Such considerations are sufficient to justify the prepara- 
tion of a book of speeches by Lincoln and Macaulay for 
study by pupils in the high school. To these considera- 
tions may be added others of almost equal importance. 
Both men have wholesome and absorbingly interesting 
biographies. Both were statesmen, identified with their 
country's history, — Lincoln, especially, summing up in 
his experience more of what makes America the nation it is 
to-day than any other since the time of Washington. 



viii Introduction 

Both were exceedingly effective speakers; no more striking 
examples of the power of persuasion in public address can 
be found than Macaulay's speeches on Copyright and 
Lincoln's address at Cooper Union. 

There are, to be sure, striking contrasts between these 
men, as may be seen at once by a study of their early lives, 
their education, their social training, and their personal 
characters. Yet at the bottom the successes of both are 
to be traced to the same sources. Both were kindly, 
sincere, and earnest men, who threw themselves without 
reserve into any cause which enlisted their sympathy; both 
prepared for their tasks with the utmost diligence; each 
conunanded respect by his personality and each moved 
straight on to his goal, unspoiled by praise and unhindered 
by blame. In the last analysis, the speeches of one have 
the same value as those of the other; they reflect the char- 
acter of a true man of purpose who used his opportimities 
and attained real greatness. 

II 

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 

The career of Macaulay has been made familiar to most 
high school boys and girls in connection with the reading 
of his essays on Milton and on Johnson. Doubtless many 
who will use this book will find little that is new in the 
following account of him. The point of view, however, 
from which these paragraphs are written is new, inasmuch 
as we shall trace, not the whole life of the man, but only 
those events and influences which give promise of explain- 
ing to some degree his remarkable forensic ability. Ma- 
caulay was always a pleader; he was always conscious of 
an audience. His was the role of the advocate rather than 



Thomas Bablngton Macaulay ix 

of the judge. Hence the reader feels that he is being urged 
to pass judgment even in those pieces, Hke the Essay on 
Addison, which are most purely critical in character. But 
we are here concerned with the orator, with Macaulay 
the parhamentarian, rather than with Macaulay the 
critic, biographer, or historian. Hence we shall inquire 
how it was that he became a great speaker. 

We note first of all that Macaulay was precocious and 
that he had a good home. The biography of him by his 
nephew, Mr. G. O. Trevelyan, contains plenty of evidence 
of both, and this biography every one who is interested in 
Macaulay will read. From it he will learn that Macaulay's 
ancestors were men of brains; that his father was a some- 
what overzealous but thoroughly upright and able re- 
former, who played a part in the freeing of the slaves in 
the English colonies second only to that of Wilberforce 
himself; that Macaulay's mother was of more genial 
temperament and that to her Macaulay owed a large 
measure of his capacity for good fellowship and his taste 
for reading. This was manifested to a remarkable degree 
when he was but a child of three, though doubtless the 
stories of his expounding large volumes to the serving- 
maid at that age are somewhat highly colored. He did, 
however, read such pieces as Scott's Lay of the Last Min- 
strel at six and was able to repeat whole cantos of it from 
memory after a single perusal. This singular power to 
read several times as fast as the ordinary person and to 
recall at any time almost the exact language of all that he 
had read made possible that astonishing array of facts 
and allusions characteristic of his magazine articles and 
his History of England, as well as of his speeches. 

The main facts concerning Macaulay's life and works 
are soon told. Born October 25, 1800, at Rothley Temple, 
the home of Mrs. Macaulay's sister in central England, 



X Introduction 

the eldest of nine children, he spent his childhood in 
London, first at Birchin Lane in the heart of the city and 
afterward at Clapham in the suburbs. Here he had access 
to the Common, a park with shrubs and trees and some- 
w^hat diversified landscape, which furnished a world for 
the exercise of his active imagination. This was stirred by 
his omnivorous reading, in which he was guided and en- 
couraged by Hannah More, with whom he frequently 
passed weeks without returning home. He went to school 
to Mr. Greaves, though unwillingly; his mother was 
obliged to say to him daily, ''Tom, if it rains cats and dogs, 
you shall go." He preferred to stay at home and read 
or write. 

Amazing tales are told concerning the kinds and quan- 
tity of writing which the boy did. At eight he compiled 
a tolerable compendium of universal history. A little 
later he wrote a treatise on Christianity to be translated 
into the language of Malabar in order to convert the in- 
habitants. After reading Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel 
and Marmion, he began a poem in six cantos to be called 
"The Battle of Che\dot," but left this after producing a 
hundred and twenty lines, in order to undertake an heroic 
poem entitled Olaus the Great, or The Conquest of Mona, 
in which both the ancestry and the posterity of the family 
were to be idealized. Two cantos of this were completed. 
When we add to this list of accomphshments several 
hymns, we have a record probably unsurpassed by any 
boy under ten. 

In the course of 1812 it became evident that young 
Macaulay must have a more advanced school, and that 
of the Rev. Mr. Preston, at Little Shelford, a village near 
Cambridge, was decided upon. Here, though very home- 
sick, Thomas did well, got an ambition to attend Cam- 
bridge, and was befriended by the great Dean Milner. 



Thomas Babington Macaulay xi 

He read much, both at school and at home in vacations, 
and laid up in store immense acquisitions of prose and 
verse. Pilgrim's Progress and Paradise Lost, for example, 
he could reproduce entire. When at home he read aloud 
to the family in the evening. 

The Macaulay home was the frequent meeting place of 
a group of Parliamentarians deeply interested in the 
various causes to which Zachary Macaulay, the father of 
Thomas, was devoted. In this way it came about that the 
youth had a most thorough schooling in the discussion 
of public questions. Here was a group of men, thoroughly 
in earnest and among the most influential of their time, 
sincerely discussing measures for the public good. Small 
wonder that the impressionable boy who listened to them 
should have set up ideals which bore fruit later in notable 
service in the very legislative body to which they belonged. 

In October, 1818, Macaulay became a student at 
Trinity College, Cambridge, and remained there constantly 
for nearly eight years, becoming a bachelor of arts in 182 1, 
a master of arts and a fellow of the college in 1824. His 
Cambridge experience was, all in all, the happiest of his 
life. He enjoyed the intellectual companionship of the 
brightest minds, he could read without hindrance, and he 
was proud of the honors which were accorded him in all 
subjects except in mathematics, which he abhorred. Per- 
haps most important in view of his future was the gradual 
shaping of his opinions in favor of the Whigs, to the great 
discomfort of his father, who was a follower of Pitt. 

Not the least valuable of Macaulay 's opportunities at 
college was that of discussion. Evening after evening he 
dropped into the room of some fellow student, and in com- 
pany with a few congenial spirits argued pro and con every 
current question of politics, theology, and the rest. He 
was, of course, a member of the famous debating society 



xii Introduction 

called the Cambridge Union and was one of its leaders. 
Here he had just that experience in speaking on his feet, 
in meeting argument and seeking to carry his point, which 
would best prepare him for the exacting requirements of 
debate in the EngUsh Parliament. So far as education 
rather than natural endowment can be said to have made 
Macaulay a great orator, the Cambridge Union was un- 
doubtedly the most important single factor. So resource- 
ful did the young collegian become that on one occasion a 
company of visitors at Lord Lansdowne's country home 
were held spell bound for an entire day listening to a dis- 
cussion carried on by Macaulay and his friend Austen. 

In 1826 Macaulay was called to the bar, but while he 
enjoyed the social opportunities which travel on the Cir- 
cuit afforded, he cared Httle for the practice of law and 
got few cases. The only important use to which he ever 
put his legal training was the revision of the penal code 
of India while he was a member of the Supreme Council 
there. 

Literary work, on the other hand, was most attractive 
to him. While still in Cambridge he began contributing 
to Knight's Quarterly Magazine and thus attracted the 
attention of Jeffrey, the famous editor of the Edinburgh 
Review, who invited him to write for what was then the 
most influential magazine in Great Britain. Macaulay 
responded with the Essay on Milton and found himself 
suddenly a man of reputation. His breakfast table was 
covered with invitations to dine out and he had more 
social engagements than he could keep. During the re- 
mainder of his life Macaulay continued to prepare articles 
for the Edinburgh Review, thirty-six in all appearing in it, 
and so excellent were they that much larger editions than 
usual were required of the numbers containing them. 
Indeed, these so called essays — really historical and 



Thomas Babington Macaulay xiii 

biographical monographs — which were hastily prepared 
and of which the author himself often spoke disparagingly, 
have made Macaulay known to thousands who have 
never looked into the more ambitious History of England 
nor ever learned that the writer was one of England's 
greatest Parliamentarians. 

In the year 1819, Zachary Macaulay, through pre- 
occupation with reform and the bad management of his 
business partner, began to be in straitened circumstances. 
The eldest son promptly and cheerfully came to the sup- 
port of the family and from that time became increasingly 
its main stay. His income was not sufficient to meet their 
needs and he actually sold his Cambridge medals to raise 
money. In 1828, however, he was appointed commissioner 
of bankruptcy, with a salary of a thousand pounds a year. 

Soon after, he was persuaded by Lord Lansdowne to 
enter Parliament and was elected by the little borough of 
Calne. It was the period of the great reform bills and no 
more favorable time for a young man of liberal tendencies 
to enter the struggle could have been chosen. The Cath- 
olic Emancipation Bill had already passed the House of 
Commons, and a bill to remove the civil disabilities of the 
Jews had been introduced. On this Macaulay spoke and 
with such simplicity and earnestness as to make an excel- 
lent impression. Affairs were hastening to a crisis. The 
Bourbons were overthrown in Paris and Macaulay made 
his first visit to the continent to see for himself how matters 
stood in the French capital. Discontent with the govern- 
ment in England grew and at last the Whigs came into 
power. On March i, 1831, Lord John Russell introduced 
the Reform Bill, removing the franchise from one hundred 
and ten boroughs which had ceased to have any consider- 
able population. The next evening Macaulay spoke in 
favor of the measure with tremendous effect. "When he 



xiv Introduction 

sat down, the speaker sent for him, and told him that, in 
all his prolonged experience he had never seen the House 
in such a state of excitement." Macaulay was at once 
ranked with Fox, Burke, and others as among the greatest 
of English orators, and from that time the announcement 
of a speech by him "was like a trumpet call to fill the 
benches." 

During the next three years Macaulay gave his attention 
almost wholly to the work of Parliament, making many 
notable speeches. Then he received an appointment as a 
member of the Supreme Council for India and went there 
in company with his sister Margaret. He rendered great 
service to the government, helped to reorganize the 
educational system and the courts, and returned at the 
end of five years with a substantial fortune, hoping to 
devote the remainder of his life to the writing of the history 
of England from the accession of James the First to the 
passage of the Reform Bill. The call of public duty was 
too loud, however, and he soon reentered Parliament as 
a member for Edinburgh. In 1839 he entered the Cabinet 
as Minister for War. It was during this period that he 
made the two speeches on copyright printed in this volume, 
the first on February 5, 1841, and the second on April 6, 
1842. 

In a general election in 1847 Macaulay 's Edinburgh 
constituents failed to return him, but they thought better 
of it in 1852 and reelected him without any effort on his 
part. By this time, however, Macaulay was laboring 
diligently upon his history and felt that he could ill afford 
to give to public life the precious hours which remained to 
him for completing the monumental task which he had 
mapped out. He was seldom in the House, made few 
speeches, and at last retired from political life altogether 
in 1856. Three years only were left to him in which to 



Abraham Lincoln xv 

work, and only five volumes of his great history were com- 
pleted, but these are invaluable. Before he died his 
country recognized his services by making him in 1857 
Baron Macaulay of Rothley. 

Macaulay's power as a speaker was largely due to his 
remarkable command of language, his well-stored mind, 
and his earnestness of manner. He was not graceful and 
polished in gesture and his voice was not well modulated, 
but he was always exceedingly clear and he was evidently 
sincere. Much of his success was due, no doubt, to his 
unfailing good humor and good sense. While he was at 
times exceedingly severe in his attacks upon his critics and 
opponents, especially in his reviews, he was really imbued 
with a most kindly spirit and reaped in friendship the 
reward which his own hearty goodwill had won for him. 

Ill 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Acquaintance with the life and work of Abraham 
Lincoln might well be made a prerequisite for entering 
upon the rights and duties of citizenship in the United 
States. Lowell's estimate in the "Ode Recited at the 
Harvard Commemoration" has proved correct. 

"Our children shall behold his fame, 

Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, 
The kindly -earnest, brave, far-seeing man, 

New birth of our new soil, the first American." 

No other so completely sums up, both in character and 
in experience, those qualities, ideals, struggles, and achieve- 
ments which are common to our people and which dis- 
tinguish us. Lowell might well have said of Lincoln what 



xvi Introduction 

he once said of President Hayes, namely, that he found in 
him "that excellent new thing we call Americanism, 
which, I suppose, is that dignity of human nature which 
consists, perhaps, in not thinking yourself either better 
or worse than your neighbors by reason of any artificial 
distinction . " To know Abraham Lincoln and to appreciate 
and understand his writings is to come under the influence 
of a powerful personality and to learn what it means to 
have a place and opportunity in a great, free country. 

Lincoln was called to serve the nation in its hour of 
greatest need, and the story of how he was prepared for 
that service and of how he performed it is of such surpass- 
ing interest and value that every schoolboy should know 
it by heart. It is a story of an humble origin, of great 
privation, of an eager and indomitable purpose, and of 
steadfast adherence to a noble cause. Lincoln's father 
was a poor Kentucky white, descended from good stock 
but of roving and thriftless disposition and never in good 
circumstances. Lincoln's mother was a charming young 
woman of refined tastes and delicate constitution, utterly 
unable to withstand the hardships of pioneering in the 
unbroken wilderness, to which she early succumbed. 
From her, undoubtedly, Lincoln inherited the remarkable 
capacity for appreciation and feeling which he exhibited. 
This might, however, never have been discovered but for 
the strong, sympathetic, and intelUgent woman whom 
Thomas Lincoln persuaded to become his second wife. 
Encouraged by her, young Abraham struggled to obtain 
an education and never ceased in his endeavors even when 
he had become the foremost lawyer of Illinois. No better 
example of the full use of one's opportunities can be found. 
Finally the slavery issue became Lincoln's chief interest, 
and to this he gave his deepest study and the utmost of 
his physical strength, dying for it at last a martyr's death. 



Abraham Lincoln xvii 

The Lincolns were Quakers, coming originally from 
England and finding their way from point to point in the 
new land until by 1780 Abraham, Abe's grandfather, was 
settled on a fine estate in northern Virginia. The farm was 
in the track of the pioneers migrating to Kentucky, the 
land which Daniel Boone had opened up, and the Lincolns 
caught the fever of adventure, sold out for seventeen 
thousand dollars, moved west, and bought three tracts of 
government land near what is now Louisville. Alas for 
their hopes ! The father was soon shot down by the Indians 
and the boys were put out to work, the elder inheriting 
the property, which was as yet unimproved. Thomas, the 
youngest, was only six and passed from family to family, 
eventually learning the carpenter's trade in the shop of 
Joseph Hanks, and faUing in love with the daughter Nancy, 
who had taught him to write his name. 

The young couple began housekeeping in a shed in the 
village of Elizabeth town, but work was scarce and "Tom" 
Lincoln was not a good workman and hence he was soon 
compelled to try farming. On Nolin's creek, a dozen miles 
away, he built a rough cabin without chinking, door, 
windows, or floor. Here on February 12, 1809, Abraham 
Lincoln was born. 

Soon, in hope of bettering their condition, the family 
moved again and built a better cabin near Knob Creek. 
Abe was now four and for a short time accompanied his 
sister Nancy to school. With his mother's help he learned 
to read. He began to ask questions of everybody and 
learned a good deal from the preachers who occasionally 
stopped at the Lincoln house. 

Thomas Lincoln was too poor to own slaves and there 
was small chance for any but slave-owners in Kentucky 
in his day. Accordingly he decided in 18 16 to move to the 
free state of Indiana. He sold his possessions and floated 



xvlii Introduction 

on a raft down the Ohio to Anderson's Creek, and then, 
making his way fifteen miles through the forest, selected 
a spot on Little Pigeon Creek near what is now Gentry- 
ville. He then went back for his family and by dint of 
hewing a road through the woods at last got his wife and 
children to the place. 

It was a wild region, still frequented by big game, and 
subsistence depended mainly upon hunting and fishing. 
Every foot of land for cultivation must first be cleared, 
and Little Abraham, only seven, assisted in this task. 
Small wonder he became an expert with the axe! There 
was little time for building; the family spent the winter 
in a sort of half-faced camp, with a great fire in front of it 
to keep them from freezing during the bitter winter which 
came on. 

Life here was serious enough. Food was scarce and 
plain. Clothing must be made of skins. Beds were made 
by piling leaves upon brush. The days were full of the 
hardest toil and there were only the mother's Bible stories 
for entertainment in the evening. In about a year the 
mother died and left the father and children lonely and 
miserable indeed. Little Abraham grieved that no 
funeral service could be preached and contrived to send a 
note to one of their old friends, the missionary-preacher, 
David Elkin, who came and performed a service by the 
mother's grave. 

At last the father turned in his extremity to Sarah 
Johnson, a widow living in Kentucky near his former 
home, and persuaded her to marry him. She had refused 
him earlier but now thought better of him and consented 
to join her lot with his. She was well to do, strong in 
personality, and of sympathetic disposition. It was a 
great day for Abraham when she came into his life. She 
had the cabin put in order; she provided the comforts 



Abraham Lincoln xlx 

of living; and she saw to it that the children had a chance 
to get somewhat of education. She perceived at once that 
Abe was no ordinary child and gave him the help and 
encouragement necessary to enable him to make the most 
of himself. His love of reading and talking annoyed the 
father, but the step-mother saw the value of it and shielded 
him from the father's criticisms. 

The opportunities for culture were not many. There 
was some preaching, by no means all of it good. There 
was a little schooling; Abe got less than two years all told. 
But the boy managed to procure a few books. The first 
was Weems's Life of Washington, which Abe paid for by 
three days of hard work at pulling fodder. Afterward he 
read ^sop's Fables, Robinson Crusoe, The Pilgrim's 
Progress, a history of the United States, lives of Henry 
Clay and of Franklin, and the Revised Statutes of Indiana — 
all by the light of the fireplace. The Bible he came to 
know almost by heart. He seized every opportunity to 
ask questions of travelers passing by, and at eighteen 
becoming a ferryman, was able to learn a good deal about 
the world. His fondness for discussion was remarkable, 
and on occasion he would mount a stump and harangue 
his companions on the political questions of the day. He 
often walked many miles to attend court, and as he 
listened to the pleas doubtless formed an ambition to be- 
come a lawyer. At nineteen he went with a flat boat to 
New Orleans and got there an impression of the wrong of 
slavery which never left him. 

In 1830 the Lincolns moved again. In company with 
their relatives of the Johnson and Hanks families, they 
drove by ox team to Illinois and settled near New Salem 
on the Sangamon River. Abraham was now of age, six 
feet four inches in height, and capable of immense physical 
exertion. He engaged in various occupations, such as 



XX Introduction 

working in a general store and in a flouring mill, and in 
building a flat boat and taking a cargo to New Orleans. 
He was also the champion wrestler of the neighborhood. 
In 1832 he served as captain in the Black Hawk War, 
and finding himself popular, determined to run for the 
legislature. He announced his candidacy in the following 
speech: ''Fellow citizens, I presume you know who I am. 
I am humble Abraham Lincoln. I have been solicited by 
many friends to become a candidate for the legislature. 
My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman's 
dance. I am in favor of a national bank. I am in favor 
of the internal improvement system and a high protective 
tariff. These are my sentiments and political principles. 
If elected, I shall be thankful; if not, it will be all the same." 
He lost the election in spite of almost unanimous support 
in his own district, but he was never afterward defeated 
by a popular vote. 

Meanwhile Lincoln was continuing his education. He 
borrowed an English grammar of Mr. Graham, the school- 
master, and the works of Burns and Shakespeare from 
others, and having become a storekeeper was so fortunate 
as to buy a barrel of old household stuff containing a com- 
plete edition of Blacks tone's Commentaries. This he 
literally devoured. 

The store proving a failure, Lincoln became in succession 
postmaster of New Salem, and then county surveyor. 
He also fell in love with Ann Rutledge, the beautiful 
daughter of the innkeeper, and hoped to begin the prac- 
tice of law so that he might have a sufficient income on 
which to marry. This beautiful dream was shattered by 
Miss Rutledge's death, an event which gave Lincoln so 
severe a shock that for a time it was feared that he might 
lose his mind. It was years before he could think calmly 
of his loss. 



Abraham Lincoln xxi 

In 1834 Lincoln was elected to the legislature and there- 
after was much in public life. In 1836 he was reelected 
and was instrumental in having the state capitol moved 
from Vandalia to Springfield. He also joined with one 
other in a protest against the passage of resolutions con- 
cerning slavery, on the ground that while slavery was 
wrong, the promulgation of abolition doctrines would only 
increase the evils. Such a stand at that time required 
courage. 

The next year Lincoln was admitted to the bar and re- 
moved to Springfield to engage in the practice of law. 
His entire personal effects he carried in his saddle-bags. 
Business came slowly, but there was much opportunity 
for discussion of political questions. In a debating society 
which he helped to organize Lincoln had his first opportu- 
nity to oppose Stephen A. Douglas, with whom he was 
destined to come many times into conflict. He gradually 
gained a reputation for honesty and for ability in in- 
fluencing juries and so rose eventually to be the leading 
lawyer of Illinois. 

In 1838 and again in 1840 he was reelected to the legis- 
lature, and in the latter year he cast a vote as presidential 
elector for WiUiam Henry Harrison, the Whig candidate 
for President of the United States. About this time, too, 
he was married to Mary Todd, a handsome and ambitious 
daughter of one of the best families in Springfield. Four 
years later he made many speeches in support of Henry 
Clay for President and became deeply interested in national 
politics. Clay was defeated by the Democratic candidate, 
James K. Polk, who was committed to the policy of adding 
Texas to the Union as a slave state. In 1846 Lincoln was 
elected to Congress and went to Washington determined 
to oppose this measure and all others looking to extension 
of slavery. He found the national capitol itself in the con- 



xxii Introduction 

trol of the institution and sought to secure the passage of 
a law forbidding slavery in the District of Columbia, with 
the proviso that the government should pay the owners 
for the slaves which should be set free. The Whigs, how- 
ever, would not rally to such a measure and of course the 
Democrats opposed it. 

After serving his term Lincoln returned to the practice 
of law, spending eight months of each year in riding the 
circuit and the other four in Springfield, where he had much 
leisure for reading history and government in the libraries 
at the State House. They wxre years of excellent training 
for the severe trials which lay just ahead. 

Events were moving rapidly in the field of national 
politics. The admission of Texas as a slave state was not 
sufiScient to satisfy the South. The Compromise of 1850 
was devised by Clay and Webster and passed by Congress, 
but it only increased the bitter feeling of the people. Then 
the South secured the repeal of the Missouri Compromise 
and thus made it possible to extend by act of Congress the 
slave territory north of the southern boundary of Missouri. 
The territory included in what are now Nebraska and 
Kansas was about to be organized into states, and Stephen 
A. Douglas, who had become the leading figure among the 
Democrats of the North, introduced a bill in Congress 
providing that the people of this territory might decide 
for themselves whether they would have slaves or not. 
The measure carried. 

It was clear that a crisis had come. Those opposed to 
the extension of slavery saw that they must assert them- 
selves or slavery would invade even free states. Lincoln 
was deeply moved and threw himself heart and soul into 
the contest. He became a candidate for the United States 
Senate but lacked five votes in the legislature and per- 
suaded his supporters to rally to his friend Trumbull, an 



Abraham Lincoln xxiii 

anti-slavery Democrat. In 1854 a new political party 
made up of anti-slavery Whigs and Democrats, the mem- 
bers of which called themselves Republicans, was organized 
and Lincoln quickly became the chief spokesman of this 
party in Illinois. At the first Republican national con- 
vention, held in Philadelphia in 1856, Lincoln received no 
votes for Vice President. This showed that he was be- 
ginning to be known, and favorably known, outside of his 
own state. Mr. Buchanan, the Democratic candidate, 
was elected President, but the Republicans cast nearly 
a million and a half of votes and had great reason to be 
encouraged by their showing. 

Two years later Stephen A. Douglas became a candidate 
for reelection as United States Senator from Illinois. 
When he returned from Washington he found his political 
fences badly out of repair, but he was clever and powerful 
and soon had his mending well in hand. Then it was that 
the Republican leaders conceived the idea of pitting 
Lincoln, their candidate, against him in joint debate. 
Douglas rather ungraciously accepted the challenge and 
there followed a series of five of the most remarkable 
political gatherings in history. The meeting places were 
so arranged that each section of the state was visited, and 
few voters failed to attend one or more of the debates. 
Men, women, and children traveled for miles and camped 
out over night in order to be present. Each speaker had 
an hour and a half, first Douglas and then Lincoln taking 
an hour to open and a half hour to close. Douglas was 
poUshed, witty, clever, and confident; Lincoln, awkward 
but clear, earnest, and determined. 

The climax was reached when Lincoln asked Douglas 
this question: '' Can the people of a United States territory, 
in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the 
United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to the 



xxiv Introduction 

formation of a state constitution." Douglas answered 
that they could by means of their own police regulations. 
His answer satisfied the Democratic voters of Illinois and 
secured Lincoln's defeat for the senatorship, but it turned 
the South against Douglas and helped to prevent his ob- 
taining the Presidency two years later. This result 
Lincoln clearly foresaw, and persisted in a,sking his ques- 
tion against the advice of friends, saying: "The battle of 
i860 is worth a hundred of this." 

The Lincoln-Douglas debates were widely published 
and set all the nation to thinking. They made Lincoln 
known throughout the country and brought him numerous 
invitations to speak. He did go to Kansas and Wisconsin 
and he repHed to Douglas in Ohio. In October, 1859, he 
made an engagement to speak in New York before the 
Young Men's Republican Union, and in February of i860 
delivered in Cooper Institute his remarkable address on the 
position of the founders of the government with regard to 
slavery. This proved to the critical East his ability as a 
thinker and as an orator and rendered possible his being 
chosen as the available candidate for President by the 
Republicans at their national convention in Chicago the 
following November. The impression which he made can 
be understood from the words of Joseph H. Choate, one 
of our ambassadors to England, who was present. "He 
appeared in every sense of the word like one of the plain 
people among whom he loved to be counted. At first sight 
there was nothing impressive or imposing about him— 
except that his great stature singled him out from the 
crowd ; his clothes hung awkwardly on his giant frame, his 
face was of a dark pallor without the slightest tinge of 
color; his seamed and rugged features bore the furrows of 
hardship and struggle; his deepset eyes looked sad and 
anxious; his countenance in repose gave little evidence of 



Abraham Lincoln xxv 

that brain-power which had raised him from the lowest 
to the highest station among his countrymen; as he talked 
to me before the meeting, he seemed ill at ease, with that 
sort of apprehension which a young man might feel before 
presenting himself to a new and strange audience, whose 
critical disposition he dreaded. . . . When he spoke he was 
transformed; his eye kindled, his voice rang, his face shone 
and seemed to light up the whole assembly. For an hour 
and a half he held his audience in the hollow of his hand." 
The story of Lincoln's election, of the secession of the 
Southern States, of his wonderful patience, wisdom, and 
fortitude through five years of civil war, of his triumphal 
reelection, and of his humane and statesmanlike plans 
for the reconstruction of the defeated Southern States, is 
familiar to all. To give an account of these things would 
be to write an epitome of our history during those troubled 
years. At last death by an assassin's hand laid low our 
great emancipator, and the whole nation mourned. Even 
to-day we read with sincere feeling Walt Whitman's well 
known lines: — 

O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN! 

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, 
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won, 
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, 
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; 
But O heart! heart! heart! 
O the bleeding drops of red, 

Where on the deck my Captain lies, 
Fallen cold and dead. 

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; 
Rise up — for you the flag is flung — for you the bugle trills, 
For you bouquets and ribbon 'd wreaths— for you the shores a-crowding, 
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; 
Here Captain! dear father! 
This arm beneath your head! 

It is some dream that on the deck, 
You've fallen cold and dead. 



XXVI 



Introduction 



My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still, 
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will. 
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done, 
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won; 
Exult O shores, and ring O bells! 
But I with mournful tread. 

Walk the deck my Captain lies, 
Fallen cold and dead. 



f"." 












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Lincoln's Birthplace 



DESCRIPTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY 

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 

The authoritative biography of Macaulay was written by 
his nephew, G. O. Trevelyan. This is entitled The Life 
and Letters of Lord Macaulay, and is pubKshed by Harper 
and Brothers (New York, 1876). More critical in char- 
acter is the brief Macaulay by J. Cotter Morison, in the 
English Men of Letters Series, also published by Harper 
and Brothers (1883). The standard edition of Macaulay 's 
works is that edited by his sister. Lady Trevelyan. This 
is in eight volumes and is published by Longmans, Green, 
and Co. (London, 1866). A handy volume of Macaulay 's 
speeches is issued by Hurst & Co. of New York; and Every- 
man's Library (E. P. Button) includes a similar though 
not so complete a collection. The Parliamentary de- 
bates on copyright may be found in the edition published 
by Hansard for the years 1 841 -1842. 

The student of the art of speech-making may consult 
with profit such books as Phillips's Efective Speaking 
(Newton and Co., Chicago) and Denney's American 
Public Addresses (Scott Foresman and Co., Chicago), 
which contains an excellent though brief account of the 
history of oratory and an analysis of the structure of a 
speech, together vvith several complete examples. 

Everyone who reads Macaulay 's speeches on copyright 
will wish to know what the present law on the subject is. 
The British law is explained by G. S. Robertson in his 
treatise. The Law of Copyright (Oxford, The Clarendon 
Press, 191 2). The law in the United States is set forth 
in certain pamphlets to be obtained from Thorvald Sol- 



xxviii Descriptive Bibliography 

berg, Register of copyrights, Library of Congress, Washing- 
ton. Mr. Solberg is able to supply also a brief history of 
copyright enactments from 1 783-1900. A more thorough 
study of the subject may be made by referring to Play- 
right and Copyright in All Countries, by W. M. Colles and 
Harold Hardy (The Macmillan Company, New York, 
1906) and Copyright: Its History and Law, by R. R. Bowker 
(Houghton Mifflin Company, 191 1). 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

The number of books and pamphlets about Lincoln is 
enormous. Probably no one will ever attempt to read all 
of them. Only a few are really important. The chief 
biography is by John G. Nicolay and John Hay, two of 
Mr. Lincoln's secretaries. It is called Abraham Lincoln, 
a History and was published in ten volumes by the Century 
Company in 1890. John Nicolay condensed the longer 
history into a Short Life of Abraham Lincoln (Century 
Company, 1902), and Helen Nicolay wrote a Boy's Life 
of Abraham Lincoln (Century Company, 1908). A very 
readable and also very complete biography was prepared 
for "McClure's Magazine" by Ida M. Tarbell and ap- 
peared in installments from 1894 to 1899, being afterward 
published in two volumes (McClure, Phillips, 1900). 
Abraham Lincoln, The True Story of a Great Life, by W. H. 
Herndon and J. W. Weik, is an intimate personal account 
by two of Mr. Lincoln's friends and associates in Illinois. 
Although very interesting, this book is to some extent mis- 
leading. One of the best short lives is that by Norman 
Hapgood, Lincoln, The Man of the People (Macmillan, 
1899). Alonzo Rothschild presents Lincoln, Master of 
Men (Houghton Mifflin Co., 1906), emphasizing Lincoln's 
influence over his associates. John T. Morse, Jr., writes 






Descriptive Bibliography xxix 

of Lincoln the statesman, showing his relation to Ameri- 
can history {Abraham Lincoln, 2 vols., Houghton Mifflin 
Co., 1893). The best volume of Reminiscences of Abraham 
Lincoln is by A. T. Rice (Harper and Bros., 1909). 

Among the best essays and tributes are Ralph Waldo 
Emerson's Abraham Lincoln, being his remarks at the 
funeral services in Concord, April 19, 1865, Lowell's 
Abraham Lincoln, which appeared in the North American 
Review for January, 1864, and Carl Schurz's Abraham 
Lincoln, originally a review of the biography by Nicolay 
and Hay. These three essays, with other valuable material 
are contained in a single number of the Riverside Litera- 
ture Series (Houghton Mifflin Company) and may also 
be found in the collected works of the respective authors. 
An excellent address on The Career and Character of 
Abraham Lincoln, was delivered by Joseph H. Choate, 
our ambassador to Great Britain, at the Philosophical 
Institution of Edinburgh, Nov. 13, 1900. This appears in 
Lapsey's edition of Lincoln's Writings, Vol. i (1905). 
Among the other noted addresses are those by Charles 
Sumner, Bishop Fowler, and Henry Watterson. 

The Complete Works of Lincoln, comprising his speeches, 
letters, state papers, and miscellaneous writings, were 
edited by John G. Nicolay and John Hay and published 
in two volumes by the Century Company in 1894. A new 
and enlarged edition in twelve volumes was issued by the 
Tandy-Thomas Company in 1905-06. This contains a 
general introduction by Richard Watson Gilder, articles 
by Theodore Roosevelt, Henry. Watterson, and several 
other noted men, an anthology, a bibliography having 
1080 titles, and a chronological index. Every high-school 
library should possess this most valuable work. A useful, 
but by no means complete, little volume is Roe's Speeches 
and Letters of Abraham Lincoln in Everyman's Library 



XXX Descriptive Bibliography 

(E. P. Button & Co., 1907). This contains an introduction 
by James Bryce. References to other editions of Lincoln's 
speeches, with a well classified and annotated bibliog- 
raphy of books and magazine articles about Lincoln and 
portraits of him, will be found in Special Bulletin No. 7, 
issued by the Chicago Public Library in January, 1909. 



MACAULAY'S SPEECHES 
ON COPYRIGHT 




Thomas Babington Macaulay 



FIRST SPEECH ON COPYRIGHT 

DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 

FEBRUARY 5, 1841 

Though, Sir, it is in some sense agreeable to approach a 
subject with which poUtical animosities have nothing to 
do, I offer myself to your notice with some reluctance. It 
is painful to me to take a course which may possibly be 
misunderstood or misrepresented as unfriendly to the in- 5 
terests of literature and literary men. It is painful to me, 
I will add, to oppose my honorable and learned friend on 
a question which he has taken up from the purest motives, 
and which he regards with a parental interest. These feel- 
ings have hitherto kept me silent when the law of copy- 10 
right has been under discussion. But as I am, on full con- 
sideration, satisfied that the measure before us will, if 
adopted, inflict grievous injury on the public, without 
conferring any compensating advantage on men of letters, 
I think it my duty to avow that opinion and to defend it. 15 

The first thing to be done. Sir, is to settle on what prin- 
ciples the question is to be argued. Are we free to legislate 
for the public good, or are we not? Is this a question of 
expediency, or is it a question of right? Many of those 
who have written and petitioned against the existing state 20 
of things treat the question as one of right. The law of 
nature, according to them, gives to every man a sacred 
and indefeasible property in his own ideas, in the fruits of 
his own reason and imagination. The legislature has in- 
deed the power to take away this property, just as it has 25 
the power to pass an act of attainder for cutting off an 

3 



4 Thomas Babington Macaulay 

innocent man's head without a trial. But, as such an act 
of attainder would be legal murder, so would an act in- 
vading the right of an author to his copy be, according to 
these gentlemen, legal robbery. 
5 Now, Sir, if this be so, let justice be done, cost what it 
may. I am not prepared, like my honorable and learned 
friend, to agree to a compromise between right and ex- 
pediency, and to commit an injustice for the public con- 
venience. But I must say, that his theory soars far beyond 

lo the reach of my faculties. It is not necessary to go, on the 
present occasion, into a metaphysical inquiry about the 
origin of the right of property; and certainly nothing but 
the strongest necessity would lead me to discuss a subject 
so likely to be distasteful to the House. I agree, I own, 

15 with Paley in thinking that property is the creature of the 
law, and that the law which creates property can be de- 
fended only on this ground, that it is a law beneficial to 
mankind. But it is unnecessary to debate that point. For, 
even if I believed in a natural right of property, inde- 

20 pendent of utility and anterior to legislation, I should still 
deny that this right could survive the original proprietor. 
Few, I apprehend, even of those who have studied in the 
most mystical and sentimental schools of moral philosophy, 
will be disposed to maintain that there is a natural law of 

25 succession older and of higher authority than any human 
code. If there be, it is quite certain that we have abuses to 
reform much more serious than any connected with the 
question of copyright. For this natural law can be only 
one; and the modes of succession in the Queen's dominions 

30 are twenty. To go no further than England, land generally 
descends to the eldest son. In Kent the sons share and 
share alike. In many districts the youngest takes the 
whole. Formerly a portion of a man's personal property 
was secured to his family; and it was only of the residue 



Speeches on Copyright 5 

that he could dispose by will. Now he can dispose of the 
whole by will: but you limited his power, a few years ago, 
by enacting that the will should not be valid unless there 
were two witnesses. If a man dies intestate, his personal 
property generally goes according to the Statute of Dis- 5 
tributions; but there are local customs which modify that 
statute. Now which of all these systems is conformed to 
the eternal standard of right? Is it primogeniture, or gavel- 
kind, or borough English? Are wiWs jure divinof Are the 
two witnesses /wre divinof Might not the pars rationabilis 10 
of our old law have a fair claim to be regarded as of celes- 
tial institution? Was the Statute of Distributions enacted 
in Heaven long before it was adopted by Parliament? 
Or is it to Custom of York, or to Custom of London, that 
this preeminence belongs? Surely, Sir, even those who hold 15 
that there is a natural right of property must admit that 
rules prescribing the manner in which the effects of de- 
ceased persons shall be distributed are purely arbitrary, 
and originate altogether in the will of the legislature. If 
so. Sir, there is no controversy between my honorable and 20 
learned friend and myself as to the principles on which this 
question is to be argued. For the existing law gives an 
author copyright during his natural life; nor do I propose 
to invade that privilege, which I should, on the contrary, 
be prepared to defend strenuously against any assailant. 25 
The only point in issue between us is, how long after an 
author's death the state shall recognize a copyright in his 
representatives and assigns; and it can, I think, hardly be 
disputed by any rational man that this is a point which the 
legislature is free to determine in the way which may ap- 30 
pear to be the most conducive to the general good. 

We may now, therefore, I think, descend from these high 
regions, where we are in danger of being lost in the clouds, 
to firm ground and clear light. Let us look at this question 



6 Thomas Babington Macaulay 

like legislators, and after fairly balancing conveniences and 
inconveniences, pronounce between the existing law of 
copyright and the law now proposed to us. The question 
of copyright. Sir, like most questions of civil prudence, is 

5 neither black nor white, but gray. The system of copy- 
right has great advantages and great disadvantages; and 
it is our business to ascertain what these are, and then to 
make an arrangement under which the advantages may be 
as far as possible secured, and the disadvantages as far as 

lo possible excluded. The charge which I bring against my 
honorable and learned friend's bill is this, that it leaves 
the advantages nearly what they are at present, and in- 
creases the disadvantages at least four fold. 

The advantages arising from a system of copyright are 

15 obvious. It is desirable that we should have a supply of 
good books: we cannot have such a supply unless men of 
letters are liberally remunerated; and the least objection- 
able way of remunerating them is by means of copyright. 
You cannot depend for literary instruction and amusement 

20 on the leisure of men occupied in the pursuits of active life. 
Such men may occasionally produce compositions of great 
merit. But you must not look to such men for works which 
require deep meditation and long research. Works of that 
kind you can expect only from persons who make literature 

25 the business of their lives. Of these persons few will be 
found among the rich and the noble. The rich and the 
noble are not impelled to intellectual exertion by necessity. 
They may be impelled to intellectual exertion by the desire 
of distinguishing themselves, or by the desire of benefiting 

30 the community. But it is generally within these walls 
that they seek to signaHze themselves and to serve their 
fellow creatures. Both their ambition and their public 
spirit, in a country like this, naturally take a political turn. 
It is, then, on men whose profession is literature, and whose 



Speeches on Copyright 7 

private means are not ample, that you must rely for a 
supply of valuable books. Such men must be remunerated 
for their literary labor. And there are only two ways in 
which they can be remunerated. One of those ways is 
patronage; the other is copyright. 5 

There have been times in which men of letters looked, 
not to the public, but to the government, or to a few great 
men, for the reward of their exertions. It was thus in the 
time of Maecenas and Pollio at Rome, of the Medici at 
Florence, of Lewis the Fourteenth in France, of Lord Hali- 10 
fax and Lord Oxford in this country. Now, Sir, I well know 
that there are cases in which it is fit and graceful, nay, in 
which it is a sacred duty, to reward the merits or to relieve 
the distresses of men of genius by the exercise of this species 
of liberaHty. But these cases are exceptions. I can con- 15 
ceive no system more fatal to the integrity and inde- 
pendence of literary men than one under which they should 
be taught to look for their daily bread to the favor of 
ministers and nobles. I can conceive no system more cer- 
tain to turn those minds which are formed by nature to be 20 
the blessings and ornaments of our species into public 
scandals and pests. 

We have, then, only one resource left. We must betake 
ourselves to copyright, be the inconveniences of copyright 
what they may. Those inconveniences, in truth, are 25 
neither few nor small. Copyright is monopoly, and pro- 
duces all the effects which the general voice of mankind 
attributes to monopoly. My honorable and learned friend 
talks very contemptuously of those who are led away by 
the theory that monopoly makes things dear. That 30 
monopoly makes things dear is certainly a theory, as all 
the great truths which have been established by the ex- 
perience of all ages and nations, and which are taken for 
granted in all reasonings, may be said to be theories. It is 



8 Thomas Babington Macaulay 

a theory in the same sense in which it is a theory that day 
and night follow each other, that lead is heavier than wa- 
ter, that bread nourishes, that arsenic poisons, that alcohol 
intoxicates. If, as my honorable and learned friend seems 
5 to think, the whole world is in the wrong on this point, 
if the real effect of monopoly is to make articles good and 
cheap, why does he stop short in his career of change? 
Why does he limit the operation of so salutary a principle 
to sixty years? Why does he consent to anything short of 

lo a perpetuity? He told us that in consenting to anything 
short of a perpetuity he was making a compromise between 
extreme right and expediency. But if his opinion about 
monopoly be correct, extreme right and expediency would 
coincide. Or rather why should we not restore the monop- 

15 oly of the East India trade to the East India Company? 
Why should we not revive all those old monopolies which, 
in Elizabeth's reign, galled our fathers so severely that, 
maddened by intolerable wrong, they opposed to their 
sovereign a resistance before which her haughty spirit 

20 quailed for the first and for the last time? Was it the 
cheapness and excellence of commodities that then so 
violently stirred the indignation of the English people. I 
believe. Sir, that I may safely take it for granted that the 
effect of monopoly generally is to make articles scarce, to 

25 make them dear, and to make them bad. And I may with 
equal safety challenge my honorable friend to find out any 
distinction between copyright and other privileges of the 
same kind; any reason why monopoly of books should 
produce an effect directly the reverse of that which was 

30 produced by the East India Company's monopoly of tea, 
or by Lord Essex's monopoly of sweet wines. Thus, then, 
stands the case. It is good that authors should be re- 
munerated; and the least exceptionable way of remunerat- 
ing them is by a monopoly. Yet monopoly is an evil. For 



Speeches on Copyright 9 

the sake of the good we must submit to the evil; but the 
evil ought not to last a day longer than is necessary for 
the purpose of securing the good. 

Now, I will not affirm that the existing law is perfect, 
that it exactly hits the point at which the monopoly ought 5 
to cease; but this I confidently say, that the existing law 
is very much nearer that point than the law proposed by 
my honorable and learned friend. For consider this: the 
evil effects of the monopoly are proportioned to the length 
of its duration. But the good effects for the sake of which 10 
we bear with the evil effects are by no means proportioned 
to the length of its duration. A monopoly of sixty years 
produces twice as much evil as a monopoly of thirty years, 
and thrice as much evil as a monopoly of twenty years. 
But it is by no means the fact that a posthumous monopoly 15 
of sixty years gives to an author thrice as much pleasure 
and thrice as strong a motive as a posthumous monopoly 
of twenty years. On the contrary, the difference is so 
small as to be hardly perceptible. We all know how faintly 
we are affected by the prospect of very distant advantages, 20 
even when they are advantages which we may reasonably 
hope that we shall ourselves enjoy. But an advantage that 
is to be enjoyed more than half a century after we are 
dead, by somebody, we know not by whom, perhaps by 
somebody unborn, by somebody utterly unconnected with 25 
us, is really no motive at all to action. It is very probable 
that, in the course of some generations, land in the unex- 
plored and unmapped heart of the Australasian continent 
will be very valuable. But there is none of us who would 
lay down five pounds for a whole province in the heart of 30 
the Australasian continent. We know that neither we, nor 
anybody for whom we care, will ever receive a farthing of 
rent from such a province. And a man is very little moved 
by the thought that in the year 2000 or 2100, somebody 



lo Thomas Babington Macaulay 

who claims through him will employ more shepherds than 
Prince Esterhazy, and will have the finest house and gal- 
lery of pictures at Victoria or Sydney. Now, this is the 
sort of boon which my honorable and learned friend holds 
5 out to authors. Considered as a boon to them, it is a mere 
nullity; but, considered as an impost on the public, it is no 
nullity, but a very serious and pernicious reality. I will 
take an example. Dr. Johnson died fifty-six years ago. If 
the law were what my honorable and learned friend wishes 

lo to make it, somebody would now have the monopoly of 
Dr. Johnson's works. Who that somebody would be it is 
impossible to say; but we may venture to guess. I guess, 
then, that it would have been some bookseller, who was 
the assign of another bookseller, who was the grandson of 

15 a third bookseller, who had bought the copyright from 
Black Frank, the Doctor's servant and residuary legatee, 
in 1785 or 1786. Now, would the knowledge that this 
copyright would exist in 1841 have been a source of grati- 
fication to Johnson? Would it have stimulated his exer- 

20 tions? Would it have once drawn him out of his bed before 
noon? Would it have once cheered him under a fit of the 
spleen? Would it have induced him to give us one more 
allegory, one more life of a poet, one more imitation of 
Juvenal? I firmly believe not. I firmly believe that a 

25 hundred years ago, when he was writing our debates for 
the Gentleman'' s Magazine, he would very much rather have 
had twopence to buy a plate of shin of beef at a cook's shop 
underground. Considered as a reward to him, the differ- 
ence between a twenty years' term and a sixty years' term 

30 of posthumous copyright would have been nothing or next 
to nothing. But is the difference nothing to us? I can 
buy Rasselas for sixpence; I might have had to give five 
shillings for it. I can buy the Dictionary, the entire genuine 
Dictionary, for two guineas, perhaps less; I might have had 



Speeches on Copyright ii 

to give five or six guineas for it. Do I grudge this to a man 
Hke Dr. Johnson? Not at all. Show me that the prospect 
of this boon roused him to any vigorous effort, or sustained 
his spirits under depressing circumstances, and I am quite 
willing to pay the price of such an object, heavy as that 5 
price is. But what I do complain of is that my circum- 
stances are to be worse, and Johnson's none the better; 
that I am to give five pounds for what to him was not 
worth a farthing. 

The principle of copyright is this. It is a tax on readers 10 
for the purpose of giving a bounty to writers. The tax is 
an exceedingly bad one; it is a tax on one of the most in- 
nocent and most salutary of human pleasures; and never 
let us forget that a tax on innocent pleasures is a premium 
on vicious pleasures. I admit, however, the necessity of 15 
giving a bounty to genius and learning. In order to give 
such a bounty, I willingly submit even to this severe and 
burdensome tax. Nay, I am ready to increase the tax, 
if it can be shown that by so doing I should proportionally 
increase the bounty. My complaint is, that my honorable 20 
and learned friend doubles, triples, quadruples the tax, and 
makes scarcely any perceptible addition to the bounty. 
Why, Sir, what is the additional amount of taxation which 
would have been levied on the public for Dr. Johnson's 
works alone, if my honorable and learned friend's bill had 25 
been the law of the land? I have not data sufficient to 
form an opinion. But I am confident that the taxation on 
his Dictionary alone would have amounted to many thou- 
sands of pounds. In reckoning the whole additional sum 
which the holders of his copyrights would have taken out 30 
of the pockets of the public during the last half century at 
twenty thousand pounds, I feel satisfied that I very greatly 
underrate it. Now, I again say that I think it but fair that 
we should pay twenty thousand pounds in consideration of 



12 Thomas Babington Macaulay 

twenty thousand pounds' worth of pleasure and encour- 
agement received by Df. Johnson. But I think it very 
hard that we should pay twenty thousand pounds for what 
he would not have valued at five shillings. 
5 My honorable and learned friend dwells on the claims 
of the posterity of great writers. Undoubtedly, Sir, it 
would be very pleasing to see a descendant of Shakespeare 
living in opulence on the fruits of his great ancestor's 
genius. A house maintained in splendor by such a patri- 

lo mony would be a more interesting and striking object than 
Blenheim is to us, or than Strathfieldsaye will be to our 
children. But, unhappily, it is scarcely possible that, 
under any system, such a thing can come to pass. My 
honorable and learned friend does not propose that copy- 

15 right shall descend to the eldest son, or shall be bound by 
irrevocable entail. It is to be merely personal property. 
It is therefore highly improbable that it will descend dur- 
ing sixty years or half that term from parent to child. 
The chance is that more people than one will have an 

20 interest in it. They will in all probability sell it and divide 
the proceeds. The price which a bookseller will give for 
it will bear no proportion to the sum which he will after- 
wards draw from the public, if his speculation proves suc- 
cessful. He will give little, if anything, more for a term of 

25 sixty years than for a term of thirty or five-and-twenty. 
The present value of a distant advantage is always small; 
but when there is great room to doubt whether a distant 
advantage will be any advantage at all, the present value 
sinks to almost nothing. Such is the inconstancy of the 

30 public taste that no sensible man will venture to pro- 
nounce, with confidence, what the sale of any book pub- 
lished in our days will be in the years between 1890 and 
1900. The whole fashion of thinking and writing has often 
undergone a change in a much shorter period than that 



speeches on Copyright 13 

to which my honorable and learned friend would extend 
posthumous copyright. What would have been consid- 
ered the best literary property in the earlier part of Charles 
the Second's reign? I imagine Cowley's Poems. Overleap 
sixty years, and you are in the generation of which Pope 5 
asked, '' Who now reads Cowley? " What works were ever 
expected with more impatience by the public than those of 
Lord Bolingbroke, which appeared, I think, in 1754. In 
18 14, no bookseller would have thanked you for the copy- 
right of them all, if you had offered it to him for nothing. 10 
What would Paternoster Row give now for the copyright 
of Haley's Triumphs of Temper, so much admired within 
the memory of many people still living? I say, therefore, 
that, from the very nature of literary property, it will al- 
most always pass away from an author's family; and I say 15 
that the price given for it to the family will bear a very 
small proportion to the tax which the purchaser, if his 
speculation turns out well, will in the course of a long series 
of years levy on the public. 

If, Sir, I wished to find a strong and perfect illustration 20 
of the effect which I anticipate from long copyright, I 
should select, — my honorable and learned friend will be 
surprised, — I should select the case of Milton's grand- 
daughter. As often as this bill has been under discussion, 
the fate of Milton's granddaughter has been brought for- 25 
ward by the advocates of monopoly. My honorable and 
learned friend has repeatedly told the story with great 
eloquence and effect. He has dilated on the sufferings, on 
the abject poverty of this ill-fated woman, the last of an 
illustrious race. He tells us that, in the extremity of her 30 
distress, Garrick gave her a benefit, that Johnson wrote a 
prologue, and that the public contributed some hundreds 
of pounds. Was it fit, he asks, that she should receive, in 
this eleemosynary form, a small portion of what was in 



14 Thomas Babington Macaulay 

truth a debt? Why, he asks, instead of obtaining a pit- 
tance from charity did she not hve in comfort and luxury 
on the proceeds of the sale of her ancestor's works? But, 
Sir, will my honorable and learned friend tell me that this 
5 event which he has so often and so pathetically described, 
was caused by the shortness of the term of copyright? 
Why, at that time, the duration of copyright was longer 
than even he, at present, proposes to make it. The monop- 
oly lasted not sixty years, but for ever. At the time at 

lo which Milton's granddaughter asked charity, Milton's 
works were the exclusive property of a bookseller. Within 
a few months of the day on which the benefit was given at 
Garrick's theater, the holder of the copyright of Paradise 
Lost, — I think it was Tonson, — applied to the Court of 

IS Chancery for an injunction against a bookseller who had 
published a cheap edition of the great epic poem, and ob- 
tained the injunction. The representation of Comus was, 
if I remember rightly, in 1750; the injunction in 1752. 
Here, then, is a perfect illustration of the effect of long 

20 copyright. Milton's works are the property of a single 
publisher. Everybody who wants them must buy them 
at Tonson's shop, and at Tonson's price. Whoever at- 
tempts to undersell Tonson is harassed with legal proceed- 
ings. Thousands who would gladly possess a copy of 

25 Paradise Lost, must forego that great enjoyment. And 
what, in the meantime, is the situation of the only person 
for whom we can suppose that the author, protected at such 
a cost to the pubHc, was at all interested? She is reduced 
to utter destitution. Milton's works are under a monopoly. 

30 Milton's granddaughter is starving. The reader is pil- 
laged; but the writer's family is not enriched. Society is 
taxed doubly. It has to give an exorbitant price for the 
poems; and it has at the same time to give alms to the only 
surviving descendant of the poet. 



speeches on Copyright 15 

But this is not all. I think it right, Sir, to call the at- 
tention of the House to an evil, which is perhaps more to 
be apprehended when an author's copyright remains in 
the hands of his family, than when it is transferred to book- 
sellers. I seriously fear that, if such a measure as this 5 
should be adopted, many valuable w^orks will be either 
totally suppressed or grievously mutilated. I can prove 
that this danger is not chimerical ; and I am quite certain 
that, if the danger be real, the safeguards which my hon- 
orable and learned friend has devised are altogether nuga- 10 
tory. That the danger is not chimerical may easily be 
shown. Most of us, I am sure, have known persons who, 
very erroneously, as I think, but from the best motives, 
would not choose to reprint Fielding's novels, or Gibbon's 
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Some 15 
gentlemen may perhaps be of the opinion, that it would 
be as well if Tom Jones and Gibbon's History were never 
reprinted. I will not, then, dwell on these or similar cases. 
I will take cases respecting which it is not likely that there 
will be any difiference of opinion here; cases, too, in which 20 
the danger of which I now speak is not matter of supposi- 
tion, but matter of fact. Take Richardson's novels. What- 
ever I may, on the present occasion, think of my honor- 
able and learned friend's judgment as a legislator, I must 
always respect his judgment as a critic. He will, I am sure, 25 
say that Richardson's novels are among the most valuable, 
among the most original works in our language. No writ- 
ings have done more to raise the fame of EngHsh genius 
in foreign countries. No writings are more deeply pathetic. 
No writings, those of Shakespeare excepted, show more 30 
profound knowledge of the human heart. As to their 
moral tendency, I can cite the most respectable testimony. 
Dr. Johnson describes Richardson as one who has taught 
the passions to move at the command of virtue. My dear 



i6 Thomas Babington Macaulay 

and honored friend, Mr. Wilberforce, in his celebrated 
rehgious treatise, when speaking of the unchristian tend- 
ency of the fashionable novels of the eighteenth century 
distinctly excepts Richardson from the censure. Another 

5 excellent person, whom I cannot mention without respect 
and kindness. Mistress Hannah More, often declared in 
conversation, and has declared in one of her published 
poems, that she first learned from the writings of Richard- 
son those principles of piety by which her life was guided. 

lo I may safely say that books celebrated as works of art 
through the whole civilized world, and praised for their 
moral tendency by Dr. Johnson, by Mr. Wilberforce, by 
Mistress Hannah More, ought not to be suppressed. Sir, it 
is my firm belief, that if the law had been what my honor- 

15 able and learned friend proposes to make it, they would 
have been suppressed. I remember Richardson's grand- 
son well; he was a clergyman in the city of London; he 
was a most upright and excellent man; but he had con- 
ceived a strong prejudice against works of fiction. He 

20 thought all novel-reading not only frivolous but sinful. 
He said, — this I state on the authority of one of his clerical 
brethren who is now a bishop, — he said that he had never 
thought it right to read one of his grandfather's books. 
Suppose, Sir, that the law had been what my honorable 

25 and learned friend would make it. Suppose that the copy- 
right of Richardson's novels had descended, as might well 
have been the case, to this gentleman. I firmly believe 
that he would have thought it sinful to give them a wide 
circulation. I firmly believe that he would not for a hun- 

30 dred thousand pounds have deliberately done what he 
thought sinful. He would not have reprinted them. And 
what protection does my honorable and learned friend 
give to the public in such a case? Why, Sir, what he pro- 
poses is this: if a book is not reprinted during five years, 



speeches on Copyright 17 

any person who wishes to reprint it may give notice in the 
London Gazette: the advertisement must be repeated three 
times; a year must elapse; and then, if the proprietor of 
the copyright does not put forth a new edition, he loses his 
exclusive privilege. Now, what protection is this to the 5 
public? What is a new edition? Does the law define the 
number of copies that make an edition? Does it limit the 
price of a copy? Are twelve copies on large paper, charged 
at thirty guineas each, an edition? It has been usual, when 
monopoHes have been granted, to prescribe numbers and 10 
to limit prices. But I do not find that my honorable and 
learned friend proposes to do so in the present case. And, 
without some such provision, the security which he offers 
is manifestly illusory. It is my conviction that, under 
such a system as that which he recommends to us, a copy 15 
of Clarissa would have been as rare as an Aldus or a 
Caxton. 

I will give another instance. One of the most instructive, 
interesting, and delightful books in our language is Bos- 
well's Life of Johnson. Now it is well known that Boswell's 20 
eldest son considered this book, considered the whole re- 
lation of Boswell to Johnson, as a blot in the escutcheon of 
the family. He thought, not perhaps altogether without 
reason, that his father had exhibited himself in a ludicrous 
and degrading light. And thus he became so sore and 25 
irritable that at last he could not bear to hear the Life of 
Johnson mentioned. Suppose that the law had been what 
my honorable and learned friend wishes to make it. Sup- 
pose that the copyright of Boswell's Life of Johnson had 
belonged, as it well might, during sixty years, to Boswell's 30 
eldest son. What would have been the consequence? An 
unadulterated copy of the finest biographical work in the 
world would have been as scarce as the first edition of 
Camden's Britannia. 



i8 Thomas Babington Macaulay 

These are strong cases. I have shown you that, if the 
law had been what you are now going to make it, the finest 
prose work of fiction in the language, the finest biograph- 
ical work in the language, would very probably have been 
5 suppressed. But I have stated my case weakly. The books 
which I have mentioned are singularly inoffensive books, 
books not touching on any of those questions which drive 
even wise men beyond the bounds of wisdom. There are 
books of a very different kind, books which are the rallying 

lo points of great political and religious parties. What is 
likely to happen if the copyright of one of these books 
should by descent or transfer come into the possession of 
some hostile zealot? I will take a single instance. It is 
only fifty years since John Wesley died; and all his works, 

15 if the law had been what my honorable and learned friend 
wishes to make it, would now have been the property of 
some person or other. The sect founded by Wesley is the 
most numerous, the wealthiest, the most powerful, the 
most zealous of sects. In every parliamentary election 

20 it is a matter of the greatest importance to obtain the 
support of the Wesleyan Methodists. Their numerical 
strength is reckoned by hundreds of thousands. They hold 
the memory of their founder in the greatest reverence; 
and not without reason, for he w^as unquestionably a great 

25 and a good man. To his authority they constantly appeal. 
His works are in their eyes of the highest value. His doc- 
trinal writings they regard as containing the best system 
of theology ever deduced from Scripture. His journals, 
interesting even to the common reader, are peculiarly in- 

30 teresting to the Methodist: for they contain the whole 
history of that singular polity which, weak and despised 
in its beginning, is now, after the lapse of a century, so 
strong, so flourishing, and so formidable. The hymns to 
which he gave his imprimatur are a most important part 



speeches on Copyright 19 

of the public worship of his followers. Now, suppose that 
the copyright of these works should belong to some person 
who holds the memory of Wesley and the doctrines and 
discipline of the Methodists in abhorrence. There are 
many such persons. The Ecclesiastical courts are at this 5 
very time sitting on the case of a clergyman of the Estab- 
lished Church who refused Christian burial to a child 
baptized by a Methodist preacher. I took up the other 
day a work which is considered as among the most re- 
spectable organs of a large and growing party in the 10 
Church of England, and there I saw John Wesley desig- 
nated as a forsworn priest. Suppose that the works of 
Wesley were suppressed. Why, Sir, such a grievance 
would be enough to shake the foundation of government. 
Let gentlemen who are attached to the Church reflect for 15 
a moment what their feelings would be if the Book of Com- 
mon Prayer were not to be reprinted for thirty or forty 
years, if the price of a Book of Common Prayer were run 
up to five or ten guineas. And then let them determine 
whether they will pass a law under which it is possible, 20 
under which it is probable, that so intolerable a wrong may 
be done to some sect consisting perhaps of half a million 
persons. 

I am so sensible. Sir, of the kindness with which the 
House has listened to me, that I will not detain you longer. 25 
I will only say this, that if the measure before us should 
pass, and should produce one tenth part of the evil which 
it is calculated to produce, and which I fully expect it to 
produce, there will soon be a remedy, though of a very 
objectionable kind. Just as the absurd acts which pro- 30 
hibited the sale of game were virtually repealed by the 
poacher, just as many absurd revenue acts have been vir- 
tually repealed by the smuggler, so will this law be virtually 
repealed by piratical booksellers. At present the holder 



20 Thomas Bablngton Macaulay 

of copyright has the pubhc feeHng on his side. Those who 
invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the 
bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody 
is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and com- 
5 pelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of 
good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful 
transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. 
Men very different from the present race of piratical book- 
sellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great 

lo masses of capital will be constantly employed in the viola- 
tion of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal 
pursuit ; and the whole nation will be in the plot. On which 
side, indeed, should the public sympathy be when the 
question is whether some book as popular as Robinson 

IS Crusoe, or the Pilgrim's Progress, shall be in every cottage, 
or whether it shall be confined to the libraries of the rich 
for the advantage of the great grandson of a bookseller, 
who, a hundred years before, drove a hard bargain for the 
copyright with the author when in great distress? Re- 

20 member too that, when once it ceases to be considered as 
wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no 
person can say where the invasion will stop. The public 
seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright 
which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of 

25 the new copyright which you are about to create. And 
you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable 
restraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, you 
have, to a great extent, annulled those restraints which 
now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the 

30 Uving. If I saw, Sir, any probability that this bill 
could be so amended in the Committee that my ob- 
jections might be removed, I would not divide the House 
in this stage. But I am so fully convinced that no 
alteration which would not seem insupportable to my 



I 



speeches on Copyright 21 

honorable and learned friend, could render his meas- 
ure supportable to me, that I must move, though with 
regret, that this bill be read a second time this day 
six months. 



SECOND SPEECH ON COPYRIGHT 

DELIVERED IN 

A COMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 

APRIL 6, 1842 

Mr. Greene : I have been amused and gratified by the 
remarks which my noble friend has made on the arguments 
by which I prevailed on the last House of Commons to 
reject the bill introduced by a very able and accomplished 
5 man, Mr. Serjeant Talfourd. My noble friend has done 
me a high and rare honor. For this is, I believe, the first 
occasion on which a speech made in one Parliament has 
been answered in another. I should not find it difficult to 
vindicate the soundness of the reasons which I formerly 

10 urged, to set them in a clearer light, and to fortify them 
by additional facts. But it seems to me that we had better 
discuss the bill which is now on our table than the bill 
which was there fourteen months ago. Glad I am to find 
that there is a very wide difference between the two bills, 

15 and that my noble friend, though he has tried to refute my 
arguments, has acted as if he had been convinced by them. 
I objected to the term of sixty years as far too long. My 
noble friend has cut that term down to twenty-five years. 
I warned the House that, under the provisions of Mr. Ser- 

20 jeant Talfourd's bill, valuable works might not improbably 
be suppressed by the representatives of authors. My noble 
friend has prepared a clause which, as he thinks, will guard 
against that danger. I will not therefore waste the time 
of the Committee by debating points which he has con- 



Speeches on Copyright 23 

ceded, but will proceed at once to the proper business of 
this evening. 

Sir, I have no objection to the principle of my noble 
friend's bill. Indeed, I had no objection to the principle 
of the bill of last year. I have long thought that the term 5 
of copyright ought to be extended. When Mr. Serjeant 
Talfourd moved for leave to bring in his bill, I did not op- 
pose the motion. Indeed, I meant to vote for the second 
reading, and to reserve what I had to say for the Com- 
mittee. But the learned Serjeant left me no choice. He, in 10 
strong language, begged that nobody who was disposed to 
reduce the term of sixty years would divide with him. 
*'Do not," he said, ''give me your support if all that you 
mean to grant to men of letters is a miserable addition of 
fourteen or fifteen years to the present term. I do not 15 
wish for such support. I despise it." Not wishing to ob- 
trude on the learned Serjeant a support which he despised, 
I had no course left but to take the sense of the House on 
the second reading. The circumstances are now different. 
My noble friend's bill is not at present a good bill; but it 20 
may be improved into a very good bill; nor will he, I am 
persuaded, withdraw it if it should be so improved. He 
and I have the same object in view; but we differ as to 
the best mode of attaining that object. We are equally 
desirous to extend the protection now enjoyed by writers. 25 
In what way it may be extended with most benefit to them 
and with least inconvenience to the public, is the question. 

The present state of the law is this. The author of a 
work has a certain copyright in that work for a term of 
twenty-eight years. If he should live more than twenty- 30 
eight years after the publication of the work, he retains 
the copyright to the end of his life. 

My noble friend does not propose to make any addition 
to the term of twenty-eight years. But he proposes that 



24 Thomas Babington Macaulay 

the copyright shall last twenty-five years after the author's 
death. Thus my noble friend makes no addition to that 
term which is certain, but makes a very large addition to 
that term which is uncertain. 
5 My plan is different. I would make no addition to the 
uncertain term; but I would make a large addition to the 
certain term. I propose to add fourteen years to the 
twenty-eight years which the law now allows an author. 
His copyright will, in this way, last till his death, or till 

lo the expiration of forty-two years, whichever shall first 
happen. And I think that I shall be able to prove to the 
satisfaction of the Committee that my plan will be more 
beneficial to literature and to literary men than the plan 
of my noble friend. 

15 It must surely. Sir, be admitted that the protection 
which we give to books ought to be distributed as evenly 
as possible, that every book should have a fair share of 
that protection, and no book more than a fair share. 
It would evidently be absurd to put tickets into a wheel, 

20 with different numbers marked upon them, and to make 
writers draw, one a term of twenty-eight years, another a 
term of fifty, another a term of ninety. And yet this sort 
of lottery is what my noble friend proposes to establish. 
I know that we cannot altogether exclude chance. You 

25 have two terms of copyright; one certain, the other un- 
certain; and we cannot, I admit, get rid of the uncertain 
term. It is proper, no doubt, that an author's copyright 
should last during his life. But, Sir, though we cannot 
altogether exclude chance, we can very much diminish 

30 the share which chance must have in distributing the 
recompense which we wish to give to genius and learning. 
By every addition which we make to the certain term, we 
diminish the influence of chance; by every addition which 
we make to the uncertain term, we increase the influence 



Speeches on Copyright 25 

of chance. I shall make myself best understood by putting 
cases. Take two eminent female writers who died within 
our own memory, Madame D'Arblay and Miss Austen. 
As the law now stands, Miss Austen's charming novels 
would have only from twenty-eight to thirty-three years 5 
of copyright. For that extraordinary woman died young: 
she died before her genius was fully appreciated by the 
world. Madame D'Arblay outlived the whole generation 
to which she belonged. The copyright of her celebrated 
novel, Evelina, lasted, under the present law, sixty-two 10 
years. Surely this inequaUty is sufficiently great, sixty- 
two years of copyright for Evelina, only twenty-eight for 
Persuasion. But to my noble friend this inequality seems 
not great enough. He proposes to add twenty-five years 
to Madame D'Arblay's term, and not a single day to Miss 15 
Austen's term. He would give to Persuasion a copyright 
of only twenty-eight years, as at present, and to Evelina a 
copyright of eighty-seven years. Now, is this reasonable? 
See, on the other hand, the operation of my plan. I make 
no addition at all to Madame D'Arblay's term of sixty- two 20 
years, which is, in my opinion, quite long enough; but I 
extend Miss Austen's term to forty-two years, which is, in 
my opinion, not too much. You see. Sir, that at present 
chance has too much sway in this matter; that at present 
the protection which the state gives to letters is very un- 25 
equally given. You see that if my noble friend's plan be 
adopted, more will be left to chance than under the present 
system, and you will have such inequalities as are unknown 
under the present system. You see also that, under the 
system which I recommend, we shall have, not perfect cer- 30 
tainty, not perfect equality, but much less uncertainty and 
inequality than at present. 

But this is not all. My noble friend's plan is not merely 
to institute a lottery in which some writers will draw prizes 



26 Thomas Babington Macaulay 

and some will draw blanks. It is much worse than this. 
His lottery is so contrived that, in the vast majority of 
cases, the blanks will fall to the best books, and the prizes 
to books of inferior merit. 
5 Take Shakespeare. My noble friend gives a longer pro- 
tection than I should give to Lovers Labour's Lost, and 
Pericles, Prince of Tyre; but he gives a shorter protection 
than I should give to Othello and Macbeth. 
Take Milton. Milton died in 1674. The copyrights of 

10 Milton's great works would, according to my noble friend's 
plan, expire in 1699. Comus appeared in 1634, the Para- 
dise Lost in 1668. To Comus, then, my noble friend would 
give sixty-five years of copyright, and to the Paradise Lost 
only thirty-one years. Is that reasonable? Comus is a 

IS noble poem: but who would rank it with the Paradise Lost? 
My plan would give forty-two years both to the Paradise 
Lost and to Comus. 

Let us pass on from Milton to Dryden. My noble friend 
would give more than sixty years of copyright to Dryden's 

20 worst works; to the encomiastic verses on Oliver Crom- 
well, to the Wild Gallant, to the Rival Ladies, to the other 
wretched pieces as bad as anything written by Flecknoe 
or Settle: but for Theodore and Honoria, for Tancred and 
Sigismunda, for Cimon and Iphigenia, for Palamon and 

25 Arcite, for Alexander's Feast, my noble friend thinks a 
copyright of twenty-eight years sufficient. Of all Pope's 
works, that to which my noble friend would give the largest 
measure of protection is the volume of Pastorals, remark- 
able only as the production of a boy. Johnson's first work 

30 was a Translation of a Book of Travels in Abyssinia, pub- 
lished in 1735. It was so poorly executed that in his later 
years he did not like to hear it mentioned. Boswell once 
picked up a copy of it, and told his friend that he had done 
so. "Do not talk about it," said Johnson; "it is a thing 



Speeches on Copyright 27 

to be forgotten." To this performance my noble friend 
would give protection during the enormous term of 
seventy-five years. To The Lives of the Poets he would 
give protection during about thirty years. Well; take 
Henry Fielding; it matters not whom I take, but take 5 
Fielding. His early works are read only by the curious, 
and would not be read even by the curious, but for the 
fame which he acquired in the later part of his life by works 
of a very different kind. What is the value of the Temple 
Beau, of the Intriguing Chambermaid, of half a dozen other 10 
plays of which few gentlemen have even heard the names? 
Yet to these worthless pieces my noble friend would give 
a term of copyright longer by more than twenty years 
than that which he would give to Tom Jones and Amelia. 

Go on to Burke. His Uttle tract, entitled the Vindica- 15 
tion of Natural Society, is certainly not without merit; but 
it would not be remembered in our days if it did not bear 
the name of Burke. To this tract my noble friend would 
give a copyright of near seventy years. But to the great 
work on the French Revolution, to the Appeal from the 20 
New to the Old Whigs, to the letters on the Regicide Peace, 
he would give a copyright of thirty years or little more. 

And, Sir, observe that I am not selecting here and there 
extraordinary instances in order to make up the semblance 
of a case. I am taking the greatest names of our literature 25 
in chronological order. Go to other nations; go to remote 
ages; you will still find the general rule the same. There 
was no copyright at Athens or Rome; but the history of 
the Greek and Latin literature illustrates my argument 
quite as well as if copyright had existed in ancient times. 30 
Of all the plays of Sophocles, the one to which the plan 
of my noble friend would have given the most scanty rec- 
ompense would have been that wonderful masterpiece, 
the (Edipus at Colonos, Who would class together the 



28 Thomas Babington Macaulay 

Speech of Demosthenes against his Guardians^ and the Speech 
for the Crown? My noble friend, indeed, would not class 
them together. For to the Speech against the Guardians he 
would give a copyright of near seventy years: and to the 
5 incomparable Speech for the Crown a copyright of less than 
half that length. Go to Rome. My noble friend would 
give more than twice as long a term to Cicero's juvenile 
declamation in defence of Roscius Amerinus as to the 
Second Philippic. Go to France. My noble friend would 

lo give a far longer term to Racine's Freres Ennemis than to 
Athalie, and to Moliere's Etourdi than to Tartuffe. Go to 
Spain. My noble friend would give a longer term to for- 
gotten works of Cervantes, works which nobody now 
reads, than to Do7i Quixote. Go to Germany. According 

IS to my noble friend's plan, of all the works of Schiller the 

Robbers would be the most favored; of all the works of 

Goethe, the Sorrows of Werther would be the most favored. 

I thank the Committee for listening so kindly to this 

long enumeration. Gentlemen will perceive, I am sure, 

20 that it is not from pedantry that I mention the names of 
so many books and authors. But just as, in our debates 
on civil affairs, we constantly draw illustrations from civil 
history, we must, in a debate about literary property, draw 
our illustrations from literary history. Now, Sir, I have, 

25 I think, shown from literary history that the effect of my 
noble friend's plan would be to give to crude and imperfect 
works, to third-rate and fourth-rate works, a great ad- 
vantage over the highest productions of genius. It is im- 
possible to account for the facts which I have laid before 

30 you by attributing them to mere accident. Their number 
is too great, their character too uniform. We must seek 
for some other explanation; and we shall easily find one. 

It is the law of our nature that the mind shall attain its 
full power by slow degrees; and this is especially true of the 



Speeches on Copyright 29 

most vigorous minds. Young men, no doubt, have often 
produced works of great merit ; but it would be impossible 
to name any writer of the first order whose juvenile per- 
formances were his best. That all the most valuable books 
of history, of philology, of physical and metaphysical 5 
science, of divinity, of political economy, have been pro- 
duced by men of mature years will hardly be disputed. 
The case may not be quite so clear as respects works of the 
imagination. And yet I know no work of the imagination 
of the very highest class that was ever, in any age or coun- 10 
try, produced by a man under thirty-five. Whatever 
powers a youth may have received from nature, it is im- 
possible that his taste and judgment can be ripe, that his 
mind can be richly stored with images, that he can have 
observed the vicissitudes of life, that he can have studied 15 
the nicer shades of character. How, as Marmontel very 
sensibly said, is a person to paint portraits who has never 
seen faces? On the whole, I believe that I may, without 
fear of contradiction, affirm this, that of the good books 
now extant in the world more than nineteen-twentieths 20 
were published after the writers had attained the age of 
forty. If this be so, it is evident that the plan of my noble 
friend is framed on a vicious principle. For, while he gives 
to juvenile productions a very much larger protection than 
they now enjoy, he does comparatively little for the works 25 
of men in the full maturity of their powers, and absolutely 
nothing for any work which is published during the last 
three years of the life of the writer. For, by the existing 
law, the copyright of such a work lasts twenty-eight years 
from the publication; and my noble friend gives only 30 
twenty-five years to be reckoned from the writer's death. 
What I recommend is, that the certain term, reckoned 
from the date of publication, shall be forty- two years in- 
stead of twenty-eight years. In this arrangement there 



30 Thomas Babington Macaulay 

is no uncertainty, no inequality. The advantage which I 
propose to give will be the same to every book. No work 
\vill have so long a copyright as my noble friend gives to 
some books, or so short a copyright as he gives to others. 
5 No copyright will last ninety years. No copyright will 
end in twenty-eight years. To every book published in the 
course of the last seventeen years of a writer's life I give 
a longer term of copyright than my noble friend gives; 
and I am confident that no person versed in literary history 

lo will deny this, — that in general the most valuable works 
of an author are published in the course of the last seven- 
teen years of his life. I will rapidly enumerate a few, and 
but a few, of the great works of English writers to which 
my plan is more favorable than my noble friend's plan. To 

15 Lear, to Macbeth, to Othello, to the Fairy Queen, to the 
Paradise Lost, to Bacon's Novum Organum, and De Aug- 
mentis, to Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, to 
Clarendon's History, to Hume's History, to Gibbon's His- 
tory, to Smith's Wealth of Nations, to Addison's Spectators, 

20 to almost all the great works of Burke, to Clarissa and Sir 
Charles Grandison, to Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones and 
Amelia, and, with the single exception of Waverley, to all 
the novels of Sir Walter Scott, I give a longer term of copy- 
right than my noble friend gives. Can he match that list? 

25 Does not that list contain what England has produced 
greatest in many various ways, poetry, philosophy, his- 
tory, eloquence, wit, skilful portraiture of life and man- 
ners? I confidently, therefore, call on the Committee to 
take my plan in preference to the plan of my noble friend. 

30 I have shown that the protection which he proposes to give 
to letters is unequal, and unequal in the worst way. I 
have shown that his plan is to give protection to books 
in inverse proportion to their merit. I shall move, when 
we come to the third clause of the bill, to omit the words 



speeches on Copyright 31 

"twenty-five years; " and in a subsequent part of the same 
clause I shall move to substitute for the words "twenty- 
eight years" the words "forty-two years." I earnestly 
hope that the Committee will adopt these amendments; 
and I feel the firmest conviction that my noble friend's 
bill, so amended, will confer a great boon on men of letters 
with the smallest possible inconvenience to the public. 



LINCOLN'S ADDRESSES AND LETTERS 




St. Gaudens' Statue of Lincoln 



SPEECH DELIVERED AT PEORIA, ILLINOIS 

OCTOBER i6, 1854 

But one great argument in support of the repeal of the 
Missouri Compromise is still to come. That argument is 
''the sacred right of self-government." It seems our dis- 
tinguished Senator has found great difi&culty in getting his 
antagonists, even in the Senate, to meet him fairly on this 5 
argument. Some poet has said: 

*' Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." 

At the hazard of being thought one of the fools of this 
quotation, I meet that argument — I rush in — I take that 
bull by the horns. I trust I understand and truly estimate 10 
the right of self-government. My faith in the proposition 
that each man should do precisely as he pleases with all 
which is exclusively his own lies at the foundation of the 
sense of justice there is in me. I extend the principle to 
communities of men as well as to individuals. I so extend 15 
it because it is poHtically wise, as well as naturally just; 
politically wise in saving us from broils about matters 
which do not concern us. Here, or at Washington, I would 
not trouble myself with the oyster laws of Virginia, or the 
cranberry laws of Indiana. The doctrine of self-government 20 
is right, — absolutely and eternally right, — but it has no 
just application as here attempted. Or perhaps I should 
rather say that whether it has such application depends 
upon whether a negro is not or is a man. If he is not a man, 
in that case he who is a man may as a matter of self- 25 
government do just what he pleases with him. But if the 
negro is a man, is it not to that extent a total destruction 

35 



36 Abraham Lincoln 

of self-government to say that he too shall not govern him- 
self? When the white man governs himself, that is self- 
government; but when he governs himself, and also gov- 
erns another man, that is more than self-government — 
5 that is despotism. If the negro is a man, why then my 
ancient faith teaches me that "all men are created equal," 
and that there can be no moral right in connection with 
one man's making a slave of another. 

Judge Douglas frequently, with bitter irony and sar- 

10 casm, paraphrases our argument by saying: "The white 
people of Nebraska are good enough to govern themselves, 
but they are not good enough to govern a few miserable 
negroes." 

Well, I doubt not that the people of Nebraska are and 

15 will continue to be as good as the average of people else- 
where. I do not say the contrary. What I do say is that 
no man is good enough to govern another man without 
that other's consent. I say this is the leading principle, 
the sheet-anchor of American repubUcanism. Our Declar- 

20 ation of Independence says : 

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men 
are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator 
with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these 

25 rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving 
their just powers from the consent of the governed. ^^ 

I have quoted so much at this time merely to show that, 
according to our ancient faith, the just powers of govern- 
ment are derived from the consent of the governed. Now 

30 the relation of master and slave is pro tanto a total viola- 
tion of this principle. The master not only governs the 
slave without his consent, but he governs him by a 
set of rules altogether different from those which he pre- 
scribes for himself. Allow all the goveriiQcl an equal voice 



Addresses and Letters 37 

in the government, and that, and that only, is self- 
government. 

Let it not be said I am contending for the establishment 
of political and social equality between the whites and 
blacks. I have already said the contrary. I am not com- 5 
bating the argument of necessity, arising from the fact that 
the blacks are already among us; but I am combating 
what is set up as a moral argument for allowing them to be 
taken where they have never yet been — arguing against 
the extension of a bad thing, which, where it already ex- 10 
ists, we must of necessity manage as we best can. 

In support of his application of the doctrine of self- 
government, Senator Douglas has sought to bring to his aid 
the opinions and examples of our Revolutionary fathers. 
I am glad he has done this. I love the sentiments of those 15 
old-time men, and shall be most happy to abide by their 
opinions. He shows us that when it was in contemplation 
for the colonies to break off from Great Britain, and set 
up a new government for themselves, several of the States 
instructed their delegates to go for the measure, provided 20 
each State should be allowed to regulate its domestic 
concerns in its own way. I do not quote ; but this in sub- 
stance. This was right; I see nothing objectionable in it. 
I also think it probable that it had some reference to the 
existence of slavery among them. I will not deny that it 25 
had. But had it any reference to the carrying of slavery 
into new countries? That is the question, and we will let 
the fathers themselves answer it. 

This same generation of men, and mostly the same in- 
dividuals of the generation who declared this principle, 30 
who declared independence, who fought the war of the 
Revolution through, who afterward made the Constitution 
under which we still live — these same men passed the 
Ordinance of '87, declaring that slavery should never go 



38 Abraham Lincoln 

to the Northwest Territory. I have no doubt Judge 
Douglas thinks they were very inconsistent in this. It is 
a question of discrimination between them and him. But 
there is not an inch of ground left for his claiming that their 
5 opinions, their example, their authority, are on his side in 
the controversy. 

Again, is not Nebraska, while a Territory, a part of us? 
Do we not own the country? And if we surrender the con- 
trol of it, do we not surrender the right of self-government? 

10 It is part of ourselves. If you say we shall not control it, 
because it is only part, the same is true of every other part; 
and when all the parts are gone, what has become of the 
whole? What is then left of us? What use for the Gen- 
eral Government, when there is nothing left for it to 

15 govern? 

But you say this question should be left to the people of 
Nebraska, because they are more particularly interested. 
If this be the rule, you must leave it to each individual to 
say for himself whether he will have slaves. What better 

20 moral right have thirty-one citizens of Nebraska to say 
that the thirty-second shall not hold slaves than the people 
of the thirty-one States have to say that slavery shall not 
go into the thirty-second State at all? 

But if it is a sacred right for the people of Nebraska to 

25 take and hold slaves there, it is equally their sacred right 
to buy them where they can buy them cheapest; and that, 
undoubtedly, will be on the coast of Africa, provided you 
will consent not to hang them for going there to buy them. 
You must remove this restriction, too, from the sacred 

30 right of self-government. I am aware, you say, that taking 
slaves from the States to Nebraska does not make slaves of 
freemen; but the African slave-trader can say just as much. 
He does not catch free negroes and bring them here. He 
finds them already slaves in the hands of their black cap- 



t 



Addresses and Letters 39 

tors, and he honestly buys them at the rate of a red cotton 
handkerchief a head. This is very cheap, and it is a great 
abridgment of the sacred right of self-government to hang 
men for engaging in this profitable trade. 

Another important objection to this application of the 5 
right of self-government is that it enables the first few to 
deprive the succeeding many of a free exercise of the right 
of self-government. The first few may get slavery in, and 
the subsequent many cannot easily get it out. How com- 
mon is the remark now in the slave States, " If we were only 10 
clear of our slaves, how much better it would be for us." 
They are actually deprived of the privilege of governing 
themselves as they would, by the action of a very few in 
the beginning. The same thing was true of the whole 
nation at the time our Constitution was formed. 15 

Whether slavery shall go into Nebraska, or other new 
Territories, is not a matter of exclusive concern to the 
people who may go there. The whole nation is interested 
that the best use shall be made of these Territories. We 
want them for homes of free white people. This they can- 20 
not be, to any considerable extent, if slavery shall be 
planted within them. Slave States are places for poor 
white people to remove from, not to remove to. New free 
States are the places for poor people to go to, and better 
their condition. For this use the nation needs these Ter- 25 
ritories. 

Still further: there are constitutional relations between 
the slave and free States which are degrading to the latter. 
We are under legal obligations to catch and return their 
runaway slaves to them: a sort of dirty, disagreeable job, 30 
which, I believe, as a general rule, the slaveholders will 
not perform for one another. Then again, in the control 
of the government — the management of the partnership 
affairs — they have greatly the advantage of us. By the 



40 Abraham Lincoln 

Constitution each State has two senators, each has a num- 
ber of representatives in proportion to the number of its 
people, and each has a number of presidential electors 
equal to the whole number of senators and representatives 
5 together. But in ascertaining the number of the people 
for this purpose, five slaves are counted as being equal to 
three whites. The slaves do not vote; they are only 
counted and so used as to swell the influence of the white 
people's votes. The practical effect of this is more aptly 

lo shown by a comparison of the States of South Carolina 
and Maine. South Carolina has six representatives, and 
so has Maine; South Carolina has eight presidential 
electors, and so has Maine. This is precise equality so 
far; and of course they are equal in senators, each having 

15 two. Thus in the control of the government the two States 
are equals precisely. But how are they in the number of 
their white people? Maine has 581,813, while South 
Carolina has 274,567; Maine has twice as many as South 
Carolina, and 32,679 over. Thus, each white man in 

20 South Carolina is more than the double of any man in 
Maine. This is all because South Carolina, besides her 
free people, has 384,984 slaves. The South Carolinian has 
precisely the same advantage over the white man in every 
other free State as well as in Maine. He is more than the 

25 double of any one of us in this crowd. The same advan- 
tage, but not to the same extent, is held by all the citizens 
of the slave States over those of the free; and it is an ab- 
solute truth, without an exception, that there is no voter 
in any slave State but who has more legal power in the 

30 government than any voter in any free State. There is 
no instance of exact equaHty; and the disadvantage is 
against us the whole chapter through. This principle, in 
the aggregate, gives the slave States in the present Con- 
gress twenty additional representatives, being seven more 



Addresses and Letters 41 

than the whole majority by which they passed the Ne- 
braska Bill. 

Now all this is manifestly unfair; yet I do not mention 
it to complain of it, in so far as it is already settled. It is 
in the Constitution, and I do not for that cause, or any 5 
other cause, propose to destroy, or alter, or disregard the 
Constitution. I stand to it, fairly, fully, and firmly. 

But when I am told I must leave it altogether to other 
people to say whether new partners are to be bred up and 
brought into the firm, on the same degrading terms against 10 
me, I respectfully demur. I insist that whether I shall be 
a whole man, or only the half of one, in comparison with 
others, is a question in which I am somewhat concerned, 
and one which no other man can have a sacred right of 
deciding for me. If I am wrong in this — if it really be a 15 
sacred right of self-government in the man who shall go to 
Nebraska to decide whether he will be the equal of me or 
the double of me, then, after he shall have exercised that 
right, and thereby shall have reduced me to a still smaller 
fraction of a man than I already am, I should like for some 20 
gentleman, deeply skilled in the mysteries of sacred rights, 
to provide himself with a microscope, and peep about, and 
find out, if he can, what has become of my sacred rights. 
They will surely be too small for detection with the naked 

eye. ^ ^ ^ ^ ... '5 

Finally, I insist that if there is anything which it is the 
duty of the whole people to never intrust to any hands but 
their own, that thing is the preservation and perpetuity 
of their own liberties and institutions. And if they shall 
think, as I do, that the extension of slavery endangers 30 
them more than any or all other causes, how recreant to 
themselves if they submit the question, and with it the 
fate of their country, to a mere handful of men bent only 
on self-interest. If this question of slavery extension were 



42 Abraham Lincoln 

an insignificant one — one having no power to do harm — 
it might be shuffled aside in this way; and being, as it is, 
the great Behemoth of danger, shall the strong grip of the 
nation be loosened upon him, to intrust him to the hands 
5 of such feeble keepers? 

I have done with this mighty argument of self- 
government. Go, sacred thing! Go in peace. 

But Nebraska is urged as a great Union-saving measure. 
Well, I too go for saving the Union. Much as I hate slav- 

lo ery, I would consent to the extension of it rather than see 
the Union dissolved, just as I would consent to any great 
evil to avoid a greater one. But when I go to Union- 
saving, I must believe, at least, that the means I employ 
have some adaptation to the end. To my mind, Nebraska 

15 has na such adaptation. 

" It hath no relish of salvation in it." 

It is an aggravation, rather, of the only one thing which 
ever endangers the Union. When it came upon us, all was 
peace and quiet. The nation was looking to the forming of 

20 new bonds of union, and a long course of peace and pros- 
perity seemed to lie before us. In the whole range of pos- 
sibility, there scarcely appears to me to have been any- 
thing out of which the slavery agitation could have been 
revived, except the very project of repealing the Missouri 

25 Compromise. Every inch of territory we owned already 
had a definite settlement of the slavery question, by which 
all parties were pledged to abide. Indeed, there was no 
uninhabited country on the continent which we could 
acquire, if we except some extreme northern regions which 

30 are wholly out of the question. 

In this state of affairs the Genius of Discord himself 
could scarcely have invented a way of again setting us by 
the ears but by turning back and destroying the peace 



Addresses and Letters 43 

measures of the past. The counsels of that Genius seem 
to have prevailed. The Missouri Compromise was re- 
pealed; and here we are in the midst of a new slavery agita- 
tion, such, I think, as we have never seen before. Who is 
responsible for this? Is it those who resist the measure, or 5 
those who causelessly brought it forward and pressed it 
through, having reason to know, and in fact knowing, it 
must and would be so resisted? It could not but be ex- 
pected by its author that it would be looked upon as a 
measure for the extension of slavery, aggravated by a gross 10 
breach of faith. 

Argue as you will and long as you will, this is the naked 
front and aspect of the measure. And in this aspect it 
could not but produce agitation. Slavery is founded in 
the selfishness of man's nature — opposition to it in his love 15 
of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism, and 
when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery extension 
brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must cease- 
lessly follow. Repeal the Missouri Compromise, repeal all 
compromises, repeal the Declaration of Independence, 20 
repeal all past history, you still cannot repeal human na- 
ture. It still will be the abundance of man's heart that 
slavery extension is wrong, and out of the abundance of 
his heart his mouth will continue to speak. 



A SPEECH DELIVERED AT SPRINGFIELD, 
ILLINOIS, AT THE REPUBLICAN STATE 
CONVENTION 

JUNE 17, 1858 

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention: 
If we could first know where we are and whither we are 
tending, we could better judge what to do and how to do 
it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was 

5 initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of 
putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation 
of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but 
has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not 
cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. 

10 "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe 
this government cannot endure permanently half slave 
and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — 
I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will 
cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the 

15 other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the 
further spread of it, and place it where the public mind 
shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate 
extinction; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall 
become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, 

20 North as well as South. 

Have we no tendency to the latter condition? 
Let any one who doubts carefully contemplate that now 
most complete legal combination — piece of machinery, so 
to speak — compounded of the Nebraska doctrine and the 

25 Dred Scott decision. Let him consider not only what work 
the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted; but 

44 



Addresses and Letters 45 

also let him study the history of its construction, and 
trace, if he can, or rather fail, if he can, to trace the evi- 
dences of design and concert of action among its chief 
architects, from the beginning. 

The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more s 
than half the States by State constitutions, and from most 
of the national territory by congressional prohibition. 
Four days later commenced the struggle which ended in 
repealing that congressional prohibition. This opened 
all the national territory to slavery, and was the first point 10 
gained. 

But, so far. Congress only had acted; and an indorse- 
ment by the people, real or apparent, was indispensable 
to save the point already gained and give chance for 
more. 15 

This necessity had not been overlooked, but had been 
provided for, as well as might be, in the notable argument 
of ''squatter sovereignty," otherwise called "sacred right 
of self-government," which latter phrase, though expres- 
sive of the only rightful basis of any government, was so 20 
perverted in this attempted use of it as to amount to just 
this: That if any one man choose to enslave another, no 
third man shall be allowed to object. That argument was 
incorporated into the Nebraska bill itself, in the language 
which follows: ''It being the true intent and meaning of 25 
this act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, 
nor to exclude it therefrom; but to leave the people thereof 
perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institu- 
tions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of 
the United States." Then opened the roar of loose dec- 30 
lamation in favor of "squatter sovereignty" and "sacred 
right of self-government." "But," said opposition mem- 
bers, "let us amend the bill so as to expressly declare that 
the people of the Territory may exclude slavery." "Not 



46 Abraham Lincoln 

we," said the friends of the measure; and down they voted 
the amendment. 

While the Nebraska bill was passing through Congress, 
a law case involving the question of a negro's freedom, by 
S reason of his owner having voluntarily taken him first into 
a free State and then into a Territory covered by the con- 
gressional prohibition, and held him as a slave for a long 
time in each, was passing through the United States Cir- 
cuit Court for the District of Missouri; and both Nebraska 

10 bill and law suit were brought to a decision in the same 
month of May, 1854. The negro's name was Dred Scott, 
which name now designates the decision finally made in 
the case. Before the then next presidential election, the 
law case came to and was argued in the Supreme Court of 

IS the United States; but the decision of it was deferred until 
after the election. Still, before the election. Senator 
Trumbull, on the floor of the Senate, requested the leading 
advocate of the Nebraska bill to state his opinion whether 
the people of a Territory can constitutionally exclude 

20 slavery from their limits; and the latter answered: ''That 
is a question for the Supreme Court." 

The election came. Mr. Buchanan was elected, and the 
indorsement, such as it was, secured. That was the second 
point gained. The indorsement, however, fell short of a 

25 clear popular majority by nearly four hundred thousand 
votes, and so, perhaps, was not overwhelmingly reliable 
and satisfactory. The outgoing President, in his last an- 
nual message, as impressively as possible echoed back upon 
the people the weight and authority of the indorsement! 

50 The Supreme Court met again; did not announce their 
decision, but ordered a reargument. The presidential 
inauguration came, and still no decision of the court; but 
the incoming President in his inaugural address fervently 
exhorted the people to abide by the forthcoming decision, 



Addresses and Letters 47 

whatever it might be. Then in a few days came the deci- 
sion. 

The reputed author of the Nebraska bill finds an early 
occasion to make a speech at this capital indorsing the 
Dred Scott decision, and vehemently denouncing all op- s 
position to it. The new President, too, seizes the early 
occasion of the Silliman letter to indorse and strongly con- 
strue that decision, and to express his astonishment that 
any different view had ever been entertained. 

At length a squabble springs up between the President lo 
and the author of the Nebraska bill, on the mere question 
of fact, whether the Lecompton constitution was or was 
not, in any just sense, made by the people of Kansas; and 
in that quarrel, he latter declares that all he wants is a 
fair vote for the people, and that he cares not whether 15 
slavery be voted down or voted up. I do not understand 
his declaration that he cares not whether slavery be voted 
down or voted up to be intended by him other than as an 
apt definition of the policy he would impress upon the 
public mind — the principle for which he declares he has 20 
suffered so much, and is ready to suffer to the end. And 
well may he cling to that principle. If he has any parental 
feeling, well may he cling to it. That principle is the only 
shred left of his original Nebraska doctrine. Under the 
Dred Scott decision, "squatter sovereignty" squatted out 25 
of existence, tumbled down like temporary scaffolding — 
like the mold at the foundry, served through one blast, and 
fell back into loose sand, — helped to carry an election, and 
then was kicked to the winds. His late joint struggle with 
the RepubUcans against the Lecompton constitution in- 30 
volves nothing of the original Nebraska doctrine. That 
struggle was made on a point — the right of a people to 
make their own constitution — upon which he and the 
Republicans have never differed. 



48 Abraham Lincoln 

The several pomts of the Dred Scott decision, in con- 
nection with Senator Douglas's "care not" policy, con- 
stitute the piece of machinery in its present state of 
advancement. This was the third point gained. The 
5 working points of that machinery are: 

(i) That no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, 
and no descendant of such slave, can ever be a citizen of 
any State, in the sense of that term as used in the Con- 
stitution of the United States. This point is made in order 

lo to deprive the negro in every possible event of the benefit 
of that provision of the United States Constitution which 
declares that ''the citizens of each State shall be entitled 
to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the 
several States." 

IS (2) That "subject to the Constitution of the United 
States," neither Congress nor a territorial legislature can 
exclude slavery from any United States Territory. This 
point is made in order that individual men may fill up the 
Territories with slaves, without danger of losing them as 

20 property, and thus enhance the chances of permanency to 
the institution through all the future. 

(3) That whether the holding a negro in actual slavery 
in a free State makes him free as against the holder, the 
United States courts will not decide, but will leave to be 

25 decided by the courts of any slave State the negro may be 
forced into by the master. This point is made not to be 
pressed immediately, but, if acquiesced in for a while, and 
apparently indorsed by the people at an election, then to 
sustain the logical conclusion that what Dred Scott's 

30 master might lawfully do with Dred Scott in the free State 

of Illinois, every other master may lawfully do with any 

other one or one thousand slaves in Illinois or in any other 

free State. 

AuxiUary to all this, and working hand-in-hand with it, 



Addresses and Letters 49 

the Nebraska doctrine, or what is left of it, is to educate 
and mold public opinion, at least Northern public opinion, 
not to care whether slavery is voted down or voted up. 
This shows exactly where we now are, and partially, also, 
whither we are tending. 5 

It will throw additional light on the latter, to go back 
and run the mind over the string of historical facts already 
stated. Several things will now appear less dark and mys- 
terious than they did when they were transpiring. The 
people were to be left "perfectly free," ''subject only to 10 
the Constitution." What the Constitution had to do with 
it outsiders could not then see. Plainly enough now, it 
was an exactly fitted niche for the Dred Scott decision to 
afterward come in, and declare the perfect freedom of the 
people to be just no freedom at all. Why was the amend- 15 
ment expressly declaring the right of the people voted 
down? Plainly enough now, the adoption of it would have 
spoiled the niche for the Dred Scott decision. Why was 
the court decision held up? Why even a senator's in- 
dividual opinion withheld till after the presidential elec- 20 
tion? Plainly enough now, the speaking out then would 
have damaged the ''perfectly free" argument upon which 
the election was to be carried. Why the outgoing Presi- 
dent's felicitation on the indorsement? Why the delay of 
a reargument? Why the incoming President's advance 25 
exhortation in favor of the decision? These things look 
like the cautious patting and petting of a spirited horse 
preparatory to mounting him, when it is dreaded that he 
may give the rider a fall. And why the hasty after- 
indorsement of the decision by the President and others? 30 

We cannot absolutely know that all these adaptations 
are the result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of 
framed timber, different portions of which we know have 
been gotten out at different times and places and by dif- 



50 Abraham Lincoln 

ferent workmen, — Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James, 
for instance, — and we see those timbers joined together, 
and see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, 
all the tenons and mortices exactly fitting, and all the 
5 lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly 
adapted to their respective place, and not a piece too many 
or too few, not omitting even scaffolding — or, if a single 
piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted 
and prepared yet to bring such piece in — in such a case 

lo we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Frank- 
lin and Roger and James all understood one another from 
the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft 
drawn up before the first blow was struck. 

It should not be overlooked that, by the Nebraska bill, 

15 the people of a State as well as Territory were to be left 
"perfectly free," "subject only to the Constitution." 
Why mention a State? They were legislating for Terri- 
tories, and not for or about States. Certainly the people 
of a State are and ought to be subject to the Constitution 

20 of the United States; but why is mention of this lugged 
into this merely territorial law? Why are the people of a 
Territory and the people of a State therein lumped to- 
gether, and their relation to the Constitution therein 
treated as being precisely the same? While the opinion of 

25 the court by Chief Justice Taney, in the Dred Scott case, 
and the separate opinions of all the concurring judges, 
expressly declare that the Constitution of the United 
States neither permits Congress nor a territorial legis- 
lature to exclude slavery from any United States Terri- 

30 tory, they all omit to declare whether or not the same 
Constitution permits a State, or the people of a State, to 
exclude it. Possibly, this is a mere omission; but who can 
be quite sure, if McLean or Curtis had sought to get into 
the opinion a declaration of unliniited power in the people 



Addresses and Letters 51 

of a State to exclude slavery from their limits, just as 
Chase and Mace sought to get such declaration, in behalf 
of the people of a Territory, into the Nebraska bill — I ask, 
who can be quite sure that it would not have been voted 
down in the one case as it had been in the other? The s 
nearest approach to the point of declaring the power of a 
State over slavery is made by Judge Nelson. He ap- 
proaches it more than once, using the precise idea, and al- 
most the language, too, of the Nebraska act. On one 
occasion his exact language is: "Except in cases where the 10 
power is restrained by the Constitution of the United 
States, the law of the State is supreme over the subject of 
slavery within its jurisdiction." In what cases the power 
of the State is so restrained by the United States Constitu- 
tion is left an open question, precisely as the same question 15 
as to the restraint on the power of the Territories was left 
open in the Nebraska act. Put this and that together, and 
we have another nice little niche, which we may, ere long, 
see filled with another Supreme Court decision declaring 
that the Constitution of the United States does not permit 20 
a State to exclude slavery from its Hmits. And this may 
especially be expected if the doctrine of "care not whether 
slavery be voted down or voted up" shall gain upon the 
public mind sufficiently to give promise that such a deci- 
sion can be maintained when made. 25 

Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being 
alike lawful in all the States. Welcome, or unwelcome, 
such decision is probably coming, and will soon be upon 
us, unless the power of the present political dynasty shall 
be met and overthrown. We shall lie down pleasantly 30 
dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of 
making their State free, and we shall awake to the reality 
instead that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave 
State. To meet and overthrow the power of that dynasty 



52 Abraham Lincoln 

is the work now before all those who would prevent that 
consummation. That is what we have to do. How can 
we best do it? 
There are those who denounce us openly to their own 
S friends, and yet whisper us softly that Senator Douglas 
is the aptest instrument there is with which to effect that 
object. They wish us to infer all from the fact that he now 
has a little quarrel with the present head of the dynasty; 
and that he has regularly voted with us on a single point 

lo upon which he and we have never differed. They remind 
us that he is a great man, and that the largest of us are 
very small ones. Let this be granted. But "a, hving dog 
is better than a dead lion." Judge Douglas, if not a dead 
lion for this work, is at least a caged and toothless one. 

15 How can he oppose the advances of slavery? He don't 
care anything about it. His avowed mission is impressing 
the ''public heart" to care nothing about it. A leading 
Douglas Democratic newspaper thinks Douglas's superior 
talent will be needed to resist the revival of the African 

20 slave trade. Does Douglas beUeve an effort to revive that 
trade is approaching? He has not said so. Does he really 
think so? But if it is, how can he resist it? For years he 
has labored to prove it a sacred right of white men to take 
negro slaves into the new Territories. Can he possibly 

25 show that it is less a sacred right to buy them where they 
can be bought cheapest? And unquestionably they can 
be bought cheaper in Africa than in Virginia. He has done 
all in his power to reduce the whole question of slavery to 
one of a mere right of property; and as such, how can he 

30 oppose the foreign slave trade? How can he refuse that 
trade in that "property" shall be "perfectly free," unless 
he does it as a protection to the home production? And as 
the home producers will probably not ask the protection, 
he will be wholly without a ground of opposition. 



Addresses and Letters 53 

Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may right- 
fully be wiser to-day than he was yesterday— that he may 
rightfully change when he finds himself wrong. But can 
we, for that reason, run ahead, and infer that he will make 
any particular change, of which he himself has given no s 
intimation? Can we safely base our action upon any such 
vague inference? Now, as ever, I wish not to misrepresent 
Judge Douglas's position, question his motives, or do aught 
than can be personally offensive to him. Whenever, if 
ever, he and we can come together on principle so that our lo 
great cause may have assistance from his great ability, I 
hope to have interposed no adventitious obstacle. But 
clearly, he is not now with us— he does not pretend to be— 
he does not promise ever to be. 

Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, n 
its own undoubted friends— those whose hands are free, 
whose hearts are in the work, who do care for the result. 
Two years ago the Republicans of the nation mustered 
over thirteen hundred thousand strong. We did this under 
the single impulse of resistance to a common danger, with 20 
every external circumstance against us. Of strange, dis- 
cordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from the 
four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, and 
under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and 
pampered enemy. Did we brave all then to falter now?— 25 
now, when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered, and 
belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not 
fail— if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels 
may accelerate or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later, 
the victory is sure to come. ^o 



FROM THE REPLY TO DOUGLAS IN THE 
LAST JOINT DEBATE, ALTON, ILLINOIS, 
OCTOBER 15, 1858 

I HAVE stated upon former occasions, and I may as well 
state again, what I understand to be the real issue of this 
controversy between Judge Douglas and myself. On the 
point of my wanting to make war between the free and the 
5 slave States, there has been no issue between us. So, too, 
when he assumes that I am in favor of introducing a per- 
fect social and political equality between the white and 
black races. These are false issues, upon which Judge 
Douglas has tried to force the controversy. There is no 

10 foundation in truth for the charge that I maintain either 
of these propositions. The real issue in this controversy — 
the one pressing upon every mind — is the sentiment on 
the part of one class that looks upon the institution of 
slavery as a wrong, and of another class that does not look 

15 upon it as a wrong. The sentiment that contemplates the 
institution of slavery in this country as a wrong is the 
sentiment of the Republican party. It is the sentiment 
around which all their actions, all their arguments, circle; 
from which all their propositions radiate. They look upon 

20 it as being a moral, social, and political wrong; and while 
they contemplate it as such, they nevertheless have due 
regard for its actual existence among us, and the diffi- 
culties of getting rid of it in any satisfactory way, and to 
all the constitutional obligations thrown about it. Yet 

25 having a due regard for these, they desire a policy in regard 
to it that looks to its not creating any more danger. They 
insist that it, as far as may be, be treated as a wrong, and 

54 



Addresses and Letters 55 

one of the methods of treating it as a wrong is to make 
provision that it shall grow no larger. They also desire a 
policy that looks to a peaceful end of slavery sometime as 
being a wrong. These are the views they entertain in re- 
gard to it, as I understand them; and all their sentiments, 5 
all their arguments and propositions, are brought within 
this range. I have said, and I repeat it here, that if there 
be a man amongst us who does not think that the institu- 
tion of slavery is wrong in any one of the aspects of which 
I have spoken, he is misplaced, and ought not to be with 10 
us. And if there be a man amongst us who is so impatient 
of it as a wrong as to disregard its actual presence among 
us and the difficulty of getting rid of it suddenly in a satis- 
factory way, and to disregard the constitutional obligations 
thrown about it, that man is misplaced if he is on our plat- 15 
form. We disclaim sympathy with him in practical action. 
He is not placed properly with us. 

On this subject of treating it as a wrong, and limiting 
its spread, let me say a word. Has anything ever threat- 
ened the existence of this Union save and except this very 20 
institution of slavery? What is it that we hold most dear 
amongst us? Our own liberty and prosperity. What 
has ever threatened our liberty and prosperity save and 
except this institution of slavery? if this is true, how do 
you propose to improve the condition of things by en- 25 
larging slavery — by spreading it out and making it bigger? 
You may have a wen or cancer upon your person, and not 
be able to cut it out lest you bleed to death; but surely it 
is no way to cure it to engraft it and spread it over your 
whole body. That is no proper way of treating what you 30 
regard as a wrong. You see this peaceful way of dealing 
with it as a wrong — restricting the spread of it, and not 
allowing it to go into new countries where it has not al- 
ready existed. That is the peaceful way, the old-fashioned 



56 Abraham Lincoln 

way, the way in which the fathers themselves set us the 
example. 

On the other hand, I have said there is a sentiment which 
treats it as not being wrong. That is the Democratic 
5 sentiment of this day. I do not mean to say that every 
man who stands within that range positively asserts that 
it is right. That class will include all who positively assert 
that it is right, and all who, like Judge Douglas, treat it as 
indifferent, and do not say it is either right or wrong. 

10 These two classes of men fall within the general class of 
those who do not look upon it as a wrong. And if there 
be among you anybody who supposes that he, as a Demo- 
crat, can consider himself ''as much opposed to slavery as 
anybody," I would like to reason with him. You never 

IS treat it as a wrong. What other thing that you consider 
as a wrong, do you deal with as you deal with that? Per- 
haps you say it is wrong, but your leader never does, and 
you quarrel with anybody who says it is wrong. Although 
you pretend to say so yourself, you can find no fit place to 

20 deal with it as a wrong. You must not say anything about 
it in the free States, because it is not here. You must not 
say anything about it in the slave States, because it is 
there. You must not say anything about it in the pulpit, 
because that is religion, and has nothing to do with it. 

25 You must not say anything about it in politics, because 
that will disturb the security of "my place." There is no 
place to talk about it as being a wrong, although you say 
yourself it is a wrong. But finally you will screw yourself 
up to the belief that if the people of the slave States should 

30 adopt a system of gradual emancipation on the slavery 
question, you would be in favor of it. You would be in 
favor of it! You say that is getting it in the right place, 
and you would be glad to see it succeed. But you are de- 
ceiving yourself. You all know that Fr^nk Blair and 



Addresses and Letters 57 

Gratz Brown, down there in St. Louis, undertook to in- 
troduce that system in Missouri. They fought as valiantly 
as they could for the system of gradual emancipation 
which you pretend you would be glad to see succeed. Now 
I will bring you to the test. After a hard fight, they were 5 
beaten; and when the news came over here, you threw up 
your hats and hurrahed for Democracy. More than that, 
take all the argument made in favor of the system you have 
proposed, and it carefully excludes the idea that there is 
anything wrong in the institution of slavery. The argu- 10 
ments to sustain that policy carefully exclude it. Even 
here to-day you heard Judge Douglas quarrel with me be- 
cause I uttered a wish that it might sometime come to an 
end. Although Henry Clay could say he wished every 
slave in the United States was in the country of his an- 15 
cestors, I am denounced by those pretending to respect 
Henry Clay for uttering a wish that it might sometime, in 
some peaceful way, come to an end. 

The Democratic policy in regard to that institution will 
not tolerate the merest breath, the slightest hint, of the 20 
least degree of wrong about it. Try it by some of Judge 
Douglas's arguments. He says he "don't care whether 
it is voted up or voted down" in the Territories. I do not 
care myself, in dealing with that expression, whether it is 
intended to be expressive of his individual sentiments on 25 
the subject, or only of the national policy he desires to 
have established. It is alike valuable for my purpose. 
Any man can say that who does not see anything wrong in 
slavery, but no man can logically say it who does see a 
wrong in it; because no man can logically say he don't 30 
care whether a wrong is voted up or voted down. He may 
say he don't care whether an indifferent thing is voted 
up or voted down, but he must logically have a choice 
between a right thing and a wrong thing. He contends 



58 Abraham Lincoln 

that whatever community wants slaves has a right to have 
them. So they have if it is not a wrong. But if it is a 
wrong, he cannot say people have a right to do wrong. He 
says that, upon the score of equality, slaves should be al- 
5 lowed to go into a new Territory like other property. This 
is strictly logical if there is no difference between it and 
other property. If it and other property are equal, his 
argument is entirely logical. But if you insist that one is 
wrong and the other right, there is no use to institute a 

10 comparison between right and wrong. You may turn over 
everything in the Democratic policy from beginning to 
end, whether in the shape it takes on the statute-book, 
in the shape it takes in the Dred Scott decision, in the shape 
it takes in conversation, or the shape it takes in short 

IS maxim-like arguments — it everywhere carefully excludes 
the idea that there is anything wrong in it. 

That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue 
in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas 
and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle be- 

20 tween these two principles — right and wrong — throughout 
the world. They are the two principles that have stood 
face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever con- 
tinue to struggle. The one is the common right of human- 
ity, and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same 

25 principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the 
same spirit that says, ''You toil and work and earn bread, 
and I'll eat it." No matter in what shape it comes, 
whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride 
the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their 

30 labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving 
another race, it is the same tyrannical principle. 

I was glad to express my gratitude at Quincy, and I 
reexpress it here to Judge Douglas — that he looks to no end 
of the institution of slavery. That will help the people to 



Addresses and Letters 59 

see where the struggle really is. It will hereafter place 
with us all men who really do wish the wrong may have an 
end. And whenever we can get rid of the fog which ob- 
scures the real question, — when we can get Judge Douglas 
and his friends to avow a policy looking to its perpetua- 5 
tion, — we can get out from among them that class of men 
and bring them to the side of those who treat it as a wrong. 
Then there will soon be an end of it, and that end will be 
its ''ultimate extinction." Whenever the issue can be dis- 
tinctly made, and all extraneous matter thrown out, so 10 
that men can fairly see the real difference between the 
parties, this controversy mil soon be settled, and it will 
be done peaceably too. There will be no war, no violence. 
It will be placed again where the wisest and best men of the 
world placed it. Brooks of South Carolina once declared 15 
that when this Constitution was framed, its framers did 
not look to the institution existing until this day. When he 
said this, I think he stated a fact that is fully borne out by 
the history of the times. But he also said they were better 
and wiser men than the men of these days; yet the men of 20 
these days had experience which they had not, and by the 
invention of the cotton-gin it became a necessity in this 
country that slavery should be perpetual. I now say that, 
willingly or unwillingly, purposely or without purpose. 
Judge Douglas has been the. most prominent instrument 25 
in changing the position of the institution to slavery, — 
which the fathers of the government expected to come to 
an end ere this, — and putting it upon Brooks's cotton-gin 
basis — placing it where he openly confesses he has no desire 
there shall ever be an end of it. 30 



ADDRESS AT COOPER UNION, NEW YORK, 
FEBRUARY 27, i860 

Mr. President and Fellow-citizens of New York: 
The facts with which I shall deal this evening are mainly 
old and familiar; nor is there anything new in the general 
use I shall make of them. If there shall be any novelty, 
5 it will be in the mode of presenting the facts, and the in- 
ferences and observations following that presentation. In 
his speech last autumn at Columbus, Ohio, as reported in 
the New York Times, Senator Douglas said: 

" Our fathers, when they framed the government under which we 
10 live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we 
do now." 

I fully indorse this, and I adopt it as a text for this dis- 
course. I so adopt it because it furnishes a precise and 
an agreed starting-point for a discussion between Repub- 

15 licans and the wing of the Democracy headed by Senator 
Douglas. It simply leaves the inquiry: What was the 
understanding those fathers had of the question men- 
tioned? 

What is the frame of government under which we live? 

20 The answer must be, "The Constitution of the United 
States." That Constitution consists of the original, framed 
in 1787, and under which the present government first 
went into operation, and twelve subsequently framed 
amendments, the first ten of which were framed in 1789. 

25 Who were our fathers that framed the Constitution? I 
suppose the "thirty-nine" who signed the original instru- 
ment may be fairly called our fathers who framed that part 
of the present government. It is almost exactly true to 

60 



Addresses and Letters 6i 

say they framed it, and it is altogether true to say they 
fairly represented the opinion and sentiment of the whole 
nation at that time. Their names, being familiar to nearly 
all, and accessible to quite all, need not now be repeated. 

I take these "thirty-nine," for the present, as being 5 
"our fathers who framed the government under which we 
live." What is the question, which, according to the text, 
those fathers understood "just as well, and even better, 
than we do now?" 

It is this: Does the proper division of local from Federal 10 
authority or anything in the Constitution, forbid our 
Federal Government to control as to slavery in our Federal 
Territories? 

Upon this. Senator Douglas holds the affirmative, and 
Republicans the negative. This affirmation and denial 15 
form an issue; and this issue — this question — is precisely 
what the text declares our fathers understood "better 
than we." Let us now inquire whether the "thirty-nine," 
or any of them, ever acted upon this question; and if they 
did, how they acted upon it — how they expressed that 20 
better understanding. In 1 784, three years before the Con- 
stitution, the United States then owning the Northwestern 
Territory, and no other, the Congress of the Confederation 
had before them the question of prohibiting slavery in that 
Territory; and four of the "thirty-nine" who afterward 25 
framed the Constitution were in that Congress, and voted 
on that question. Of these, Roger Sherman, Thomas 
Miffiin, and Hugh Williamson voted for the prohibition, 
thus showing that, in their understanding, no line dividing 
local from Federal authority, nor anything else, properly 30 
forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery 
in Federal territory. The other of the four, James Mc- 
Henry, voted against the prohibition, showing that for 
some cause he thought it improper to vote for it. 



62 Abraham Lincoln 

In 1787, still before the Constitution, but while the 
convention was in session framing it, and while the North- 
western Territory still was the only Territory owned by 
the United States, the same question of prohibiting slavery 
5 in the Territory again came before the Congress of the 
Confederation; and two more of the '' thirty-nine" who 
afterward signed the Constitution were in that Congress, 
and voted on the question. They were William Blount 
and William Few; and they both voted for the prohibi- 

10 tion — thus showing that in their understanding no line 
dividing local from Federal authority, nor anything else, 
properly forbade the Federal Government to control as to 
slavery in Federal territory. This time the prohibition 
became a law, being part of what is now well known as the 

15 Ordinance of '87. 

The question of Federal control of slavery in the Terri- 
tories seems not to have been directly before the conven- 
tion which framed the original Constitution; and hence it 
is not recorded that the "thirty-nine," or any of them, 

20 while engaged on that instrument, expressed any opinion 
on that precise question. 

In 1789, by the first Congress which sat under the Con- 
stitution, an Act was passed to enforce the Ordinance of 
'87, including the prohibition of slavery in the North- 

25 v/estern Territory. The bill for this Act was reported by 
one of the "thirty-nine" — Thomas Fitzsimmons, then a 
member of the House of Representatives from Pennsyl- 
vania. It went through all its stages without ayes and 
nays, which is equivalent to a unanimous passage. In this 

30 Congress there were sixteen of the thirty-nine fathers who 
framed the original Constitution. They were John Lang- 
don, Nicholas Oilman, Wm. S. Johnson, Roger Sherman, 
Robert Morris, Thomas Fitzsimmons, William Few, 
Abraham Baldwin, Rufus King, William Paterson, George 



Addresses and Letters 63 

Clymer, Richard Bassett, George Read, Pierce Butler, 
Daniel Carroll, and James Madison. 

This shows that, in their understanding, no line dividing 
local from Federal authority, nor anything in the Constitu- 
tion, properly forbade Congress to prohibit slavery in the 5 
Federal territory; else both their fidelity to correct prin- 
ciple, and their oath to support the Constitution, would 
have constrained them to oppose the prohibition. 

Again, George Washington, another of the " thirty-nine," 
was then President of the United States, and as such ap- 10 
proved and signed the bill, thus completing its validity as 
a law, and thus showing that, in his understanding, no 
Hne dividing local from Federal authority, nor anything 
in the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to 
control as to slavery in Federal territory. 15 

No great while after the adoption of the original Con- 
stitution, North Carolina ceded to the Federal Govern- 
ment the country now constituting the State of Tennessee; 
and a few years later, Georgia ceded that which now con- 
stitutes the States of Mississippi and Alabama. In both 20 
deeds of cession it was made a condition by the ceding 
States that the Federal Government should not prohibit 
slavery in the ceded country. Besides this, slavery was 
then actually in the ceded country. Under these circum- 
stances, Congress, on taking charge of these countries, did 25 
not absolutely prohibit slavery within them. But they 
did interfere with it — take control of it — even there, to a 
certain extent. In 1798 Congress organized the Territory 
of Mississippi. In the Act of organization they prohibited 
the bringing of slaves into the Territory from any place 30 
without the United States by fine and giving freedom to 
slaves so brought. This Act passed both branches of Con- 
gress without yeas and nays. In that Congress were three 
of the *' thirty-nine" who framed the original Constitution. 



64 Abraham Lincoln 

They were John Langdon, George Read, and Abraham 
Baldwin. They all probably voted for it. Certainly they 
would have placed their opposition to it upon record if, in 
their understanding, any hne dividing local from Federal 
5 authority or anything in the Constitution, properly forbade 
the Federal Government to control as to slavery in Federal 
territory. 

In 1803 the Federal Government purchased the Louis- 
iana country. Our former territorial acquisitions came 

10 from certain of our own States; but this Louisiana country 
was acquired from a foreign nation. In 1804 Congress gave 
a territorial organization to that part of it which now con- 
stitutes the State of Louisiana. New Orleans, lying within 
that part, was an old and comparatively large city. There 

15 were other considerable towns and settlements, and slavery 
was extensively and thoroughly intermingled with the 
people. Congress did not, in that territorial Act, prohibit 
slavery; but they did interfere with it — take control of it — 
in a more marked and extensive way than they did in the 

20 case of Mississippi. The substance of the provision therein 
made in relation to slaves was: 

1. That no slave should be imported into the Territory 
from foreign parts. 

2. That no slave should be carried into it who had been 
25 imported into the United States since the first day of May, 

1798. 

3. That no slave should be carried into it, except by 
the owner, and for his own use as a settler; the penalty in 
all cases being a fine upon the violator of the law, and free- 

30 dom to the slave. 

This Act also was passed without ayes or nays. In the 
Congress which passed it there were two of the "thirty- 
nine." They were Abraham Baldwin and Jonathan Day- 
ton. As stated in the case of Mississippi, it is probable 



Addresses and Letters 65 

they both voted for it. They would not have allowed it 
to pass without recording their opposition to it if, in their 
understanding, it violated either the line properly dividing 
local from Federal authority, or any provision of the Con- 
stitution. 5 

In 1819-20 came and passed the Missouri question. 
Many votes were taken, by yeas and nays, in both branches 
of Congress, upon the various phases of the general ques- 
tion. Two of the " thirty-nine " — Rufus King and Charles 
Pinckney — were members of that Congress. Mr. King 10 
steadily voted for slavery prohibition and against all com- 
promises, while Mr. Pinckney as steadily voted against 
slavery prohibition and against all compromises. By this, 
Mr. King showed that, in his understanding, no line divid- 
ing local from Federal authority, nor anything in the Con- 15 
stitution, was violated by Congress prohibiting slavery in 
Federal territory; while Mr. Pinckney, by his votes, showed 
that, in his understanding, there was some sufficient reason 
for opposing such prohibition in that case. 

The cases I have mentioned are the only acts of the 20 
'Hhirty-nine," or any of them, upon the direct issue, which 
I have been able to discover. 

To enumerate the persons who thus acted as being four 
in 1784, two in 1787, seventeen in 1789, three in 1798, two 
in 1804, and two in 1819-20, there would be thirty of them. 25 
But this would be counting John Langdon, Roger Sher- 
man, William Few, Rufus King, and George Read each 
twice, and Abraham Baldwin three times. The true num- 
ber of those of the "thirty-nine" whom I have shown to 
have acted upon the question which, by the text, they un- 30 
derstood better than we, is twenty-three, leaving sixteen 
not shown to have acted upon it in any way. 

Here, then, we have twenty-three out of our thirty-nine 
fathers "who framed the government under which we live," 



66 Abraham Lincoln 

who have, upon their official responsibiUty and their cor- 
poral oaths, acted upon the very question which the text 
affirms they "understood just as well, and even better, 
than we do now; " and twenty-one of them — a clear major- 
5 ity of the whole "thirty-nine" — so acting upon it as to 
make them guilty of gross political impropriety and wilful 
perjury if, in their understanding, any proper division 
between local and Federal authority, or anything in the 
Constitution they had made themselves and sworn to 

lo support, forbade the Federal Government to control as to 
slavery in the Federal Territories. Thus the twenty-one 
acted; and, as actions speak louder than words, so actions 
under such responsibility speak still louder. 

Two of the twenty-three voted against congressional 

15 prohibition of slavery in the Federal territories in the in- 
stances in which they acted upon the question. But for 
what reasons they so voted is not known. They may have 
done so because they thought a proper division of local 
from Federal authority, or some provision or principle of 

20 the Constitution, stood in the way; or they may, without 
any such question, have voted against the prohibition on 
what appeared to them to be sufficient grounds of ex- 
pediency. No one who has sworn to support the Constitu- 
tion can conscientiously vote for what he imderstands to 

25 be an unconstitutional measure, however expedient he may 
think it; but one may and ought to vote against a measure 
which he deems constitutional if, at the same time, he 
deems it inexpedient. It, therefore, would be unsafe to 
set down even the two who voted against the prohibition 

30 as having done so because, in their understanding, any 
proper division of local from Federal authority, or any- 
thing in the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government 
to control as to slavery in Federal territory. 
The remaining sixteen of the "thirty-nine," so far as I 



Addresses and Letters (i^ 

have discovered, have left no record of their understanding 
upon the direct question of Federal control of slavery in 
the Federal Territories. But there is much reason to be- 
heve that their understanding upon that question would 
not have appeared different from that of their twenty-three 5 
compeers, had it been manifested at all. 

For the purpose of adhering rigidly to the text, I have 
purposely omitted whatever understanding may have 
been manifested by any person, however distinguished, 
other than the thirty-nine fathers who framed the original 10 
Constitution; and, for the same reason, I have also omitted 
whatever understanding may have been manifested by any 
of the " thirty-nine" even on any other phase of the general 
question of slavery. If we should look into their acts and 
declarations on those other phases, as the foreign slave- 15 
trade and the morality and policy of slavery generally, it 
would appear to us that on the direct question of Federal 
control of slavery in Federal Territories, the sixteen, if 
they had acted at all, would probably have acted as the 
twenty- three did. Among that sixteen were several of the 20 
most noted anti-slavery men of those times, as Dr. Frank- 
lin, Alexander Hamilton, and Gouverneur Morris, while 
there was not one now known to have been otherwise, un- 
less it may be John Rutledge of South Carolina. 

The sum of the whole is that of our thirty-nine fathers 25 
who framed the original Constitution, twenty-one — a clear 
majority of the whole — certainly understood that no proper 
division of local from Federal authority, nor any part of 
the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to con- 
trol slavery in the Federal Territories; while all the rest 30 
had probably the same understanding. Such, unquestion- 
ably, was the understanding of our fathers who framed the 
original Constitution ; and the text affirms that they under- 
stood the question ''better than we." 



68 Abraham Lincoln 

But, so far, I have been considering the understanding of 
the question manifested by the framers of the original 
Constitution. In and by the original instrument, a mode 
was provided for amending it; and, as I have already 
5 stated, the present frame of " the government under which 
we live" consists of that original, and twelve amendatory 
articles framed and adopted since. Those who now insist 
that Federal control of slavery in Federal Territories 
violates the Constitution, point us to the provisions which 

lo they suppose it thus violates; and, as I understand, they 
all fix upon provisions in these amendatory articles, and 
not in the original instrument. The Supreme Court, in 
the Dred Scott case, plant themselves upon the Fifth 
Amendment, which provides that no person shall be de- 

15 prived of "life, liberty, or property without due process of 
law"; while Senator Douglas and his peculiar adherents 
plant themselves upon the Tenth Amendment, providing 
that "the powers not delegated to the United States by 
the Constitution" are reserved to the States respectively, 

20 or to the people. 

Now, it so happens that these amendments were framed 
by the first Congress which sat under the Constitution — 
the identical Congress which passed the Act, already men- 
tioned, enforcing the prohibition of slavery in the North- 

25 western Territory. Not only was it the same Congress, 
but they were the identical, same individual men who, at 
the same session, and at the same time within the session, 
had under consideration, and in progress toward maturity, 
these constitutional amendments and this Act prohibiting 

30 slavery in all the territory the nation owned. The con- 
stitutional amendments were introduced before, and passed 
after, the Act enforcing the Ordinance of '87, so that, dur- 
ing the whole pendency of the Act to enforce the Ordinance, 
the constitutional amendments were also pending. 



Addresses and Letters 69 

The seventy-six members of that Congress, including 
sixteen of the framers of the original Constitution, as be- 
fore stated, were preeminently our fathers who framed that 
part of "the government under which we live", which is 
now claimed as forbidding the Federal Government to con- 5 
trol slavery in the Federal Territories. 

Is it not a little presumptuous in any one at this day to 
afhrm that the two things which that Congress deliber- 
ately framed and carried to maturity at the same time, are 
absolutely inconsistent with each other? And does not 10 
such affirmation become impudently absurd when coupled 
with the other affirmation, from the same mouth, that 
those who did the two things alleged to be inconsistent, un- 
derstood whether they really were inconsistent better than 
we — better than he who affirms that they are inconsistent? 15 

It is surely safe to assume that the thirty-nine framers 
of the original Constitution, and the seventy-six members 
of the Congress which framed the amendments thereto 
taken together do certainly include those who may be 
fairly called "our fathers who framed the government 20 
under which we live." And so assuming, I defy any man 
to show that any one of them ever, in his whole life, de- 
clared that, in his understanding, any proper division of 
local from Federal authority, or any part of the Constitu- 
tion, forbade the Federal Government to control as to 25 
slavery in the Federal Territories. I go a step further. I 
defy any one to show that any living man in the whole 
world ever did, prior to the beginning of the present cen- 
tury (and I might almost say prior to the beginning of the 
last half of the present century) declare that, in his under- 30 
standing, any proper division of local from Federal author- 
ity, or any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal 
Government to control as to slavery in the Federal Terri- 
tories. To those who now so declare I give not only "our 



JO Abraham Lincoln 

fathers who framed the government under which we Hve," 
but with them all other living men within the century in 
which it was framed, among whom to search, and they 
shall not be able to find the evidence of a single man agree- 
5 ing with them. 

Now, and here, let me guard a little against being mis- 
understood. I do not mean to say we are bound to follow 
implicitly in whatever our fathers did. To do so would be 
to discard all the lights of current experience — to reject 

lo all progress, all improvement. What I do say is that, if 
we would supplant the opinions and policy of our fathers 
in any case, we should do so upon evidence so conclusive 
and argument so clear, that even their great authority, 
fairly considered and weighed, cannot stand; and most 

15 surely not in a case whereof we ourselves declare they 
understood the question better than we. 

If any man at this day sincerely believes that a proper 
division of local from Federal authority, or any part of 
the Constitution, forbids, the Federal Government to 

20 control as to slavery in the Federal Territories, he is right 
to say so, and to enforce his position by all truthful evi- 
dence and fair argument which he can. But he has no 
right to mislead others, who have less access to history 
and less leisure to study it, into the false belief that "our 

25 fathers who framed the government under which we live " 
were of the same opinion — thus substituting falsehood 
and deception for truthful evidence and fair argument. 
If any man at this day sincerely believes '' our fathers who 
framed the government under which we live" used and 

30 applied principles in other cases which ought to have led 
them to understand that a proper division of local from 
Federal authority, or some part of the Constitution, for- 
bids the Federal Government to control as to slavery in 
the Federal Territories, he is right to say so. But he 



Addresses and Letters 71 

should, at the same time, brave the responsibility of de- 
claring that, in his opinion, he understands their principles 
better than they did themselves and especially should he 
not shirk that responsibility by asserting that they ''under- 
stood the question just as well, and even better, than we s 
do now." 

But enough! Let all who believe that "our fathers who 
framed the government under which we live understood 
this question just as well, and even better, than we do 
now," speak as they spoke, and act as they acted upon it. 10 
This is all Republicans ask — all Republicans desire — in 
relation to slavery. As those fathers marked it, so let it 
be again marked, as an evil not to be extended, but to be 
tolerated and protected only because of and so far as its 
actual presence among us makes that toleration and pro- 15 
tection a necessity. Let all the guaranties those fathers 
gave it be not grudgingly, but fully and fairly, maintained. 
For this Republicans contend, and with this, so far as I 
know or believe, they will be content. 

And now, if they would listen — as I suppose they will 20 
not, — I would address a few words to the Southern people. 

I would say to them : You consider yourselves a reason- 
able and a just people; and I consider that in the general 
qualities of reason and justice you are not inferior to any 
other people. Still, when you speak of us Republicans, 25 
you do so only to denounce us as reptiles, or, at the best, 
as no better than outlaws. You will grant a hearing to 
pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to ''Black Re- 
publicans." In all your contentions with one another, 
each of you deems an unconditional condemnation of 30 
"Black Republicanism" as the first thing to be attended 
to. Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be an in- 
dispensable prerequisite — license, so to speak — among you 
to be admitted or permitted to speak at all. Now, can you 



72 Abraham Lincoln 

or not be prevailed upon to pause and to consider whether 
this is quite just to us, or even to yourselves? Bring for- 
ward your charges and specifications, and then be patient 
long enough to hear us deny or justify. 
5 You say we are sectional. We deny it. That makes an 
issue; and the burden of proof is upon you. You produce 
your proof; and what is it? Why, that our party has no 
existence in your section — gets no votes in your section. 
The fact is substantially true; but does it prove the issue? 

lo If it does, then in case we should, without change of prin- 
ciple, begin to get votes in your section, we should thereby 
cease to be sectional. You cannot escape this conclusion; 
and yet are you willing to abide by it? If you are, you will 
probably soon find that we have ceased to be sectional, 

IS for we shall get votes in your section this very year. You 
will then begin to discover, as the truth plainly is, that 
your proof does not touch the issue. The fact that we get 
no votes in your section is a fact of your making, and not 
of ours. And if there be fault in that fact, that fault is 

20 primarily yours, and remains so until you show that we 
repel you by some wrong principle or practice. If we do 
repel you by any wrong principle or practice, the fault is 
ours; but this brings you to where you ought to have 
started — to a discussion of the right or wrong of our prin- 

25 ciple. If our principle, put in practice, would wrong your 
section for the benefit of ours, or for any other object, 
then our principle, and we with it, are sectional, and are 
justly opposed and denounced as such. Meet us, then, on 
the question of whether our principle, put in practice, 

30 would wrong your section ; and so meet us as if it were pos- 
sible that something may be said on our side. Do you 
accept the challenge? No ! Then you really believe that 
the principle which "our fathers who framed the govern- 
ment under which we live" thought so clearly right as to 



Addresses and Letters 73 

adopt it, and indorse it again and again upon their official 
oaths, is in fact so clearly wrong as to demand your con- 
demnation without a moment's consideration. 

Some of you delight to flaunt in our faces the warning 
against sectional parties given by Washington in his 5 
Farewell Address. Less than eight years before Washing- 
ton gave that warning, he had, as President of the United 
States, approved and signed an Act of Congress enforcing 
the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory, 
which Act embodied the policy of the Government upon 10 
that subject up to and at the very moment he penned that 
warning; and about one year after he penned it, he wrote 
Lafayette that he considered that prohibition a wise meas- 
ure, expressing in the same connection his hope that we 
should at some time have a confederacy of free States. 15 

Bearing this in mind, and seeing that sectionalism has 
since arisen upon this same subject, is that warning a 
weapon in your hands against us, or in our hands against 
you? Could Washington himself speak, would he cast the 
blame of that sectionalism upon us, who sustain his policy, 20 
or upon you, who repudiate it. We respect that warning 
of Washington, and we commend it to you, together with 
his example pointing to the right application of it. 

But you say you are conservative — eminently conserva- 
tive — while we are revolutionary, destructive, or some- 25 
thing of the sort. What is conservatism? Is it not 
adherence to the old and tried against the new and un- 
tried? We stick to, contend for, the identical old poUcy on 
the point in controversy which was adopted by ''our 
fathers who framed the government under which we live"; 30 
while you with one accord reject and scout and spit upon 
that old policy, and insist upon substituting something 
new. True, you disagree among yourselves as to what 
that substitute shall be. You are divided on new proposi- 



74 Abraham Lincoln 

tions and plans, but you are unanimous in rejecting and 
denouncing the old policy of the fathers. Some of you are 
for reviving the foreign slave-trade; some for a congres- 
sional slave code for the Territories; some for Congress 
5 forbidding the Territories to prohibit slavery within their 
limits; some for maintaining slavery in the Territories 
through the judiciary; some for the '' gur-reat pur-rinciple " 
that ''if one man would enslave another, no third man 
should object," fantastically called "popular sovereignty"; 

lo but never a man among you is in favor of Federal prohibi- 
tion of slavery in Federal Territories, according to the 
practice of "our fathers who framed the government under 
which we live." Not one of all your various plans can 
show a precedent or an advocate in the century within 

15 which our government originated. Consider, then, whether 
your claim of conservatism for yourselves, and your charge 
of destructiveness against us, are based on the most clear 
and stable foundations. 

Again, you say we have made the slavery question more 

20 prominent than it formerly was. We deny it. We admit 
that it is more prominent, but we deny that we made it so. 
It was not we, but you, who discarded the old policy of the 
fathers. We resisted, and still resist, your innovation; 
and thence comes the greater prominence of the question. 

25 Would you have that question reduced to its former pro- 
portions? Go back to that old policy. What has been 
will be again, under the same conditions. If you would 
have the peace of the old times, re-adopt the precepts and 
policy of the old times. 

30 You charge that we stir up insurrections among your 
slaves. We deny it; and what is your proof? Harper's 
Ferry! John Brown! John Brown was no Republican; 
and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in 
his Harper's Ferry enterprise. If any member of our party 



Addresses and Letters 75 

is guilty in that matter, you know it, or you do not know 
it. If you do know it, you are inexcusable for not desig- 
nating the man and proving the fact. If you do not know 
it, you are inexcusable for asserting it, and especially for 
persisting in the assertion after you have tried and failed 5 
to make the proof. You need not be told that persisting 
in a charge which one does not know to be true, is simply 
malicious slander. 

Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided 
or encouraged the Harper's Ferry affair, but still insist 10 
that our doctrines and declarations necessarily lead to such 
results. We do not believe it. We know we hold no doc- 
trine and make no declaration which were not held to and 
made by "our fathers who framed the government under 
which we live." You never dealt fairly by us in relation 15 
to this affair. When it occurred, some important State 
elections were near at hand, and you were in evident glee 
with the belief that, by charging the blame upon us, you 
could get an advantage of us in those elections. The elec- 
tions came, and your expectations were not quite fulfilled. 20 
Every Republican man knew that, as to himself at least, 
your charge was a slander, and he was not much inclined 
by it to cast his vote in your favor. Republican doctrines 
and declarations are accompanied with a continual protest 
against any interference whatever with your slaves, or 25 
with you about your slaves. Surely this does not encour- 
age them to revolt. True, we do, in common with "our 
fathers who framed the government under which we live," 
declare our belief that slavery is wrong; but the slaves do 
not hear us declare even this. For anything we say or do, 30 
the slaves would scarcely know there is a Republican party. 
I believe they would not, in fact, generally know it but for 
your misrepresentations of us in their hearing. In your 
political contests among yourselves, each faction charges 



76 Abraham Lincoln 

the other with sympathy with Black Republicanism; and 
then, to give point to the charge, defines Black Republican- 
ism to simply be insurrection, blood, and thunder among 
the slaves. 
5 Slave insurrections are no more common now than they 
were before the RepubHcan party was organized. What 
induced the Southampton insurrection twenty-eight years 
ago, in which at least three times as many lives were lost as 
at Harper's Ferry? You can scarcely stretch your very 

10 elastic fancy to the conclusion that Southampton was 
''got up by Black Republicanism." In the present state 
of things in the United States, I do not think a general, 
or even a very extensive, slave insurrection is possible. 
The indispensable concert of action cannot be attained. 

15 The slaves have no means of rapid communication; nor can 
incendiary freemen, black or white, supply it. The ex- 
plosive materials are everywhere in parcels, but there 
neither are, nor can be supplied, the indispensable con- 
necting trains. 

20 Much is said by Southern people about the affection of 
slaves for their masters and mistresses; and a part of it, 
at least, is true. A plot for an uprising could scarcely be 
devised and communicated to twenty individuals before 
some one of them, to save the life of a favorite master or 

25 mistress, would divulge it. This is the rule; and the slave 
revolution in Hayti was not an exception to it, but a case 
occurring under peculiar circumstances. The Gunpowder 
Plot of British history, though not connected with slaves, 
was more in point. In that case only about twenty were 

30 admitted to the secret; and yet one of them, in his anxiety 
to save a friend, betrayed the plot to that friend, and by 
consequence, averted the calamity. Occasional poisonings 
from the kitchen and open or stealthy assassinations in 
the field, and local revolts extending to a score or so, will 



Addresses and Letters 77 

continue to occur as the natural results of slavery; but no 
general insurrection of slaves, as I think, can happen in 
this country for a long time. Whoever much fears or 
much hopes for such an event, will be alike disap- 
pointed. 5 

In the language of Mr. Jefferson, uttered many years 
ago: "It is still in our power to direct the process of eman- 
cipation and deportation peaceably and in such slow de- 
grees as that the evil will wear insensibly; and their places 
be pari passu, filled up by free white laborers. If, on the lo 
contrary, it is left to force itself on, human nature must 
shudder at the prospect held up." 

Mr. Jefferson did not mean to say, nor do I, that the 
power of emancipation is in the Federal Government. He 
spoke of Virginia; and, as to the power of emancipation, I 15 
speak of the slave-holding States only. The Federal Gov- 
ernment, however, as we insist, has the power of restraining 
the extension of the institution — the power to insure that 
a slave insurrection shall never occur on any American 
soil which is now free from slavery. 20 

John Brown's effort was peculiar. It was not a slave 
insurrection. It was an attempt by white men to get up 
a revolt among slaves, in which the slaves refused to par- 
ticipate. In fact it was so absurd that the slaves, with all 
their ignorance, saw plainly enough it could not succeed. 25 
That affair, in its philosophy, corresponds with the many 
attempts, related in history, at the assassination of kings 
and emperors. An enthusiast broods over the oppression 
of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven 
to liberate them. He ventures the attempt, which ends 30 
in little else than his own execution. Orsini's attempt on 
Louis Napoleon and John Brown's attempt at Harper's 
Ferry were, in their philosophy, precisely the same. The 
eagerness to cast blame on old England in the one case 



78 Abraham Lincoln 

and on New England in the other, does not disprove the 
sameness of the two things. 

And how much would it avail you, if you could, by the 
use of John Brown, Helper's book, and the like, break up 
5 the Republican organization? Human action can be modi- 
fied to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed. 
There is a judgment and a feeling against slavery in this 
nation which cast at least a million and a half of votes. 
You cannot destroy that judgment and feeling — that senti- 

lo ment — by breaking up the political organization which 
rallies around it. You can scarcely scatter and disperse 
an army which has been formed into order in the face of 
your heaviest fire; but if you could, how much would you 
gain by forcing the sentiment which created it out of the 

15 peaceful channel of the ballot-box into some other channel? 
What would that other channel probably be? Would the 
number of John Browns be lessened or enlarged by the op- 
eration? 

But you will break up the Union rather than submit to 

20 a denial of your constitutional rights. 

That has a somewhat reckless sound; but it would be 
palliated, if not fully justified, were we proposing, by the 
mere force of numbers, to deprive you of some right plainly 
written down in the Constitution. But we are proposing 

25 no such thing. 

When you make these declarations, you have a specific 
and well-understood allusion to an assumed constitutional 
right of yours to take slaves into the Federal Territories, 
and to hold them there as property. But no such right is 

30 specifically written in the Constitution. That instrument 
is literally silent about any such right. We, on the con- 
trary, deny that such a right has any existence in the Con- 
stitution, even by implication. 

Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will 



Addresses and Letters 79 

destroy the government, unless you be allowed to construe 
and force the Constitution as you please on all points in 
dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all 
events. 

This, plainly stated, is your language. Perhaps you 5 
will say the Supreme Court has decided the disputed con- 
stitutional question in your favor. Not quite so. But 
waiving the lawyer's distinction between dictum and deci- 
sion, the court has decided the question for you in a sort of 
way. The court has substantially said, it is your constitu- 10 
tional right to take slaves into the Federal Territories, and 
to hold them there as property. When I say the decision 
was made in a sort of way, I mean it was made in a divided 
court, by a bare majority of the judges, and they not quite 
agreeing with one another in the reasons for making it; 15 
that it is so made as that its avowed supporters disagree 
with one another about its meaning, and that it was mainly 
based upon a mistaken statement of fact — the statement 
in the opinion that '' the right of property in a slave is dis- 
tinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution." 20 

An inspection of the Constitution will show that the 
right of property in a slave is not ''distinctly and expressly 
affirmed" in it. Bear in mind, the judges do not pledge 
their judicial opinion that such right is impliedly affirmed 
in the Constitution; but they pledge their veracity that it 25 
is "distinctly and expressly" affirmed there — "distinctly," 
that is, not mingled with anything else — "expressly," that 
is, in words meaning just that, without the aid of any 
inference, and susceptible of no other meaning. 

If they had only pledged their judicial opinion that such 30 
right is afiirmed in the instrument by implication, it would 
be open to others to show that neither the word "slave" 
nor "slavery" is to be found in the Constitution, nor the 
word "property" even, in any connection with language 



8o Abraham Lincoln 

alluding to the things slave, or slavery; and that wherever 
in that instrument the slave is alluded to, he is called a 
"person"; and wherever his master's legal right in rela- 
tion to him is alluded to, it is spoken of as '' service or labor 
5 which may be due " — as a debt payable in service or labor. 
Also it would be open to show by contemporaneous his- 
tory, that this mode of alluding to slaves and slavery, in- 
stead of speaking of them, was employed on purpose to 
exclude from the Constitution the idea that there could 

lo be property in man. 

To show all this is easy and certain. 
When this obvious mistake of the judges shall be brought 
to their notice, is it not reasonable to expect that they will 
withdraw the mistaken statement and reconsider the con- 

15 elusion based upon it? 

And then it is to be remembered that "our fathers who 
framed the government under which we live" — the men 
who made the Constitution — decided this same constitu- 
tional question in our favor long ago; decided it without 

20 division among themselves when making the decision; 

without division among themselves about the meaning of 

it after it was made, and, so far as any evidence is left, 

without basing it upon any mistaken statement of facts. 

Under all these circumstances, do you really feel your- 

25 selves justified to break up this government unless such 
a court decision as yours is shall be at once submitted to 
as a conclusive and final rule of political action? But you 
will not abide the election of a Republican president! In 
that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; 

30 and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it 
will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a 
pistol to my ear and mutters through his teeth, "Stand 
and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a mur- 
derer!" 



Addresses and Letters 8l 

To be sure, what the robber demanded of me — my 
money — was my own; and I had a clear right to keep it; 
but it was no more my own than my vote is my own; and 
the threat of death to me, to extort my money, and the 
threat of destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, can 5 
scarcely be distinguished in principle. 

A few words now to RepubUcans. It is exceedingly de- 
sirable that all parts of this great Confederacy shall be 
at peace and in harmony one with another. Let us Repub- 
licans do our part to have it so. Even though much pro- 10 
voked, let us do nothing through passion and ill temper. 
Even though the Southern people will not so much as listen 
to us, let us calmly consider their demands and yield to 
them if, in our deliberate view of our duty, we possibly 
can. Judging by all they say and do, and by the subject 15 
and the nature of their controversy with us, let us deter- 
mine, if we can, what will satisfy them. 

Will they be satisfied if the Territories be uncondition- 
ally surrendered to them? We know they will not. In all 
their present complaints against us, the Territories are 20 
scarcely mentioned. Invasions and insurrections are the 
rage now. Will it satisfy them if, in the future, we have 
nothing to do with invasions and insurrections? We know 
it will not. We so know because we know we never had 
anything to do with invasions and insurrections; and yet 25 
this total abstaining does not exempt us from the charge 
and the denunciation. 

The question recurs. What will satisfy them? Simply 
this: we must not only let them alone, but we must some- 
how convince them that we do let them alone. This we 30 
know by experience is no easy task. We have been so 
trying to convince them from the very beginning of our 
organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and 
speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let 



82 Abraham Lincoln 

them alone, but this has had no tendency to convince them. 
Alike unavailing to convince them is the fact that they 
have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb 
them. 
5 These natural and apparently adequate means all fail- 
ing, what will convince them? This, and this only; cease 
to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. 
And this must be done thoroughly — done in acts as well 
as in words. Silence will not be tolerated — we must place 

lo ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas's new 
sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all 
declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in 
pohtics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must ar- 
rest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. 

15 We must pull down our Free-state constitutions. The 
whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of op- 
position to slavery before they will cease to believe that 
all their troubles proceed from us. 

I am quite aware they do not state their case precisely 

20 in this way. Most of them would probably say to us: "Let 
us alone; do nothing to us, and say what you please about 
slavery." But we do let them alone, — have never dis- 
turbed them, — so that, after all, it is what we say which 
dissatisfies them. They will continue to accuse us of 

25 doing until we cease saying. 

I am also aware they have not as yet in terms demanded 
the overthrow of our Free-state constitutions. Yet those 
constitutions declare the wrong of slavery with more sol- 
emn emphasis than do all other sayings against it; and 

30 when all these other sayings shall have been silenced, the 
overthrow of these constitutions will be demanded, and 
nothing be left to resist the demand. It is nothing to the 
contrary that they do not demand the whole of this just 
now. Demanding what they do, and for the reason they 



Addresses and Letters 83 

do, they can voluntarily stop nowhere short of this con- 
summation. Holding, as they do, that slavery is morally 
right and socially elevating, they cannot cease to demand 
a full national recognition of it as a legal right and a social 
blessing, 5 

Nor can we justifiably withhold this on any ground save 
our conviction that slavery is wrong. If slavery is right, 
all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it are them- 
selves wrong, and should be silenced and swept away. If 
it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality — its 10 
universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon 
its extension — its enlargement. All they ask we could 
readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask they 
could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their 
thinking it right and our thinking it wrong is the precise 15 
fact upon which depends the whole controversy. Think- 
ing it right, as they do, they are not to blame for desiring 
its full recognition as being right; but thinking it wrong, as 
we do, can we yield to them? Can we cast our votes with 
their views and against our own? In view of our moral, 20 
social, and political responsibilities, can we do this? 

Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let 
it alone where it is, because that much is due to the neces- 
sity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can 
we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into 25 
the national Territories, and to overrun us here in these 
free States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us 
stand by our duty fearlessly and effectively. Let us be 
diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances where- 
with we are so industriously plied and belabored — con- 30 
trivances such as groping for some middle ground between 
the right and the wrong : vain as the search for a man who 
should be neither a living nor a dead man ; such as a policy 
of ''don't care" on a question about which all true men 



84 Abraham Lincoln 

do care; such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men 
to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and 
calling, not the sinners, but the righteous, to repentance; 
such as invocations to Washington, imploring men to un- 
5 say what Washington said and undo what Washington did. 
Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false ac- 
cusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of 
destruction to the government, nor of dungeons to our- 
selves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in 
10 that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we under- 
stand it. 



LINCOLN'S FAREWELL ADDRESS AT 
SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS 

FEBRUARY ii, 1861 

My Friends: No one, not in my situation, can appre- 
ciate my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place, 
and the kindness of these people, I owe everything. Here 
I have lived a quarter of a century, and have passed from 
a young to an old man. Here my children have been born, 5 
and one is buried. I now leave, not knowing when or 
whether ever I may return, with a task before me greater 
than that which rested upon Washington. Without the 
assistance of that Divine Being who ever attended him, I 
cannot succeed. With that assistance, I cannot fail. 10 
Trusting in Him who can go with me, and remain with 
you, and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope 
that all will yet be well. To His care commending you, 
as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you 
an affectionate farewell. 15 



ss 



ADDRESSES DELIVERED ON THE JOURNEY 
TO WASHINGTON, D. C. 

FEBRUARY ii to 27, 1861 

Reply to an Address of Welcome at Indianapolis, Indiana, 
February 11, 186 1 

Governor Morton and Fellow-citizens of the 
State or Indiana: Most heartily do I thank you for this 
magnificent reception; and while I cannot take to myself 
any share of the compliment thus paid, more than that 

5 which pertains to a mere instrument — an accidental in- 
strument perhaps I should say — of a great cause, I yet 
must look upon it as a magnificent reception, and as such 
most heartily do I thank you for it. You have been pleased 
to address yourself to me chiefly in behalf of this glorious 

10 Union in which we live, in all of which you have my hearty 
sympathy, and, as far as may be within my power, will 
have, one and inseparably, my hearty cooperation. While 
I do not expect, upon this occasion, or until I get to Wash- 
ington, to attempt any lengthy speech, I will only say that 

15 to the salvation of the Union there needs but one single 
thing, the hearts of a people like yours. When the people 
rise in mass in behalf of the Union and the liberties of this 
country, truly may it be said, "The gates of hell cannot 
prevail against them." In all trying positions in which I 

20 shall be placed, and doubtless I shall be placed in many 
such, my reliance will be upon you and the people of the 
United States; and I wish you to remember, now and for- 
ever, that it is your business, and not mine; that if the 
union of these States and the liberties of this people shall 

86 



Addresses and Letters 87 

be lost, it is but little to any one man of fifty-two years of 
age, but a great deal to the thirty millions of people who 
inhabit these United States, and to their posterity in all 
coming time. It is your business to rise up and preserve 
the Union and Hberty for yourselves, and not for me. I 5 
appeal to you again to constantly bear in mind that not 
with politicians, not with Presidents, not with office- 
seekers, but with you, is the question: Shall the Union and 
shall the liberties of this country be preserved to the latest 
generations? 10 

Address to the Legislature of New York, at Albany, New York, 
February 18, 1861 

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the General As- 
sembly OF THE State of New York: It is with feelings of 
great diflSdence, and, I may say, with feelings of awe, per- 
haps greater than I have recently experienced, that I meet 
you here in this place. The history of this great State, the 15 
renown of those great men who have stood here, and have 
spoken here, and been heard here, all crowd around my 
fancy, and incline me to shrink from any attempt to ad- 
dress you. Yet I have some confidence given me by the 
generous manner in which you have invited me, and by the 20 
still more generous manner in which you have received me, 
to speak further. You have invited and received me with- 
out distinction of party. I cannot for a moment suppose 
that this has been done in any considerable degree with 
reference to my personal services, but that it is done, in 25 
so far as I am regarded at this time, as the representative 
of the majesty of this great nation. I doubt not this is the 
truth, and the whole truth, of the case, and this is as it 
should be. It is more gratifying to me that this reception 
has been given to me as the elected representative of a free 30 



88 Abraham Lincoln 

people, than it could possibly be if tendered merely as 
an evidence of devotion to me, or to any one man per- 
sonally. 

And now I think it were more fitting that I should close 
5 these hasty remarks. It is true that, while I hold my- 
self, without mock modesty, the humblest of all individ- 
uals that have ever been elevated to the presidency, I 
have a more difficult task to perform than any one of 
them. 

lo You have generously tendered me the support — the 
united support — of the great Empire State. For this, in 
behalf of the nation — in behalf of the present and future of 
the nation — in behalf of civil and religious liberty for all 
time to come, most gratefully do I thank you. I do not 

IS propose to enter into an explanation of any particular Une 
of policy, as to our present difficulties, to be adopted by the 
incoming administration. I deem it just to you, to myself, 
to all, that I should see everything, that I should hear 
everything, that I should have every light that can be 

20 brought within my reach, in order that, when I do speak, 
I shall have enjoyed every opportunity to take correct and 
true ground; and for this reason I do not propose to speak 
at this time of the pohcy of the government. But when 
the time comes, I shall speak, as well as I am able, for the 

25 good of the present and future of this country — for the 
good both of the North and of the South — for the good of 
the one and the other, and of all sections of the country. In 
the meantime, if we have patience, if we restrain ourselves, 
if we allow ourselves not to run ojff in a passion, I still have 

30 confidence that the Almighty, the Maker of the universe, 
will, through the instrumentality of this great and intelli- 
gent people, bring us through this as he has through all 
the other difficulties of our country. Relying on this, I 
again thank you for this generous reception.- 



Addresses and Letters 89 

Address to the Senate of New Jersey, at Trenton, February 21, 

1861 

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Senate of 
THE State of New Jersey : I am very grateful to you for 
the honorable reception of which I have been the object. 
I cannot but remember the place that New Jersey holds 
in our early history. In the Revolutionary struggle few 5 
of the States among the Old Thirteen had more of the 
battle-fields of the country within their limits than New 
Jersey. May I be pardoned if, upon this occasion, I men- 
tion that away back in my childhood, the earliest days of 
my being able to read, I got hold of a small book, such a 10 
one as few of the younger members have ever seen — 
Weems's ''Life of Washington." I remember all the ac- 
counts there given of the battle-fields and struggles for 
the liberties of the country, and none fixed themselves 
upon my imagination so deeply as the struggle here at 15 
Trenton, New Jersey. The crossing of the river, the con- 
test with the Hessians, the great hardships endured at 
that time, all fixed themselves on my memory more than 
any single Revolutionary event; and you all know, for 
you have all been boys, how these early impressions last 20 
longer than any others. I recollect thinking then, boy even 
though I was, that there must have been something more 
than common that these men struggled for. I am exceed- 
ingly anxious that that thing — that something even more 
than national independence; that something that held out 25 
a great promise to all the people of the world to all time 
to come — I am exceedingly anxious that this Union, the 
Constitution, and the liberties of the people shall be per- 
petuated in accordance with the original idea for which 
that struggle was made, and I shall be most happy indeed 30 
if I shall be a humble instrument in the hands of the AI- 



90 Abraham Lincoln 

mighty, and of this, his almost chosen people, for per- 
petuating the object of that great struggle. You give me 
this reception, as I understand, without distinction of 
party. I learn that this body is composed of a majority of 
5 gentlemen who, in the exercise of their best judgment in 
the choice of a chief magistrate, did not think I was the 
man. I understand, nevertheless, that they come forward 
here to greet me as the constitutionally elected President 
of the United States — as citizens of the United States to 

lo meet the man who, for the time being, is the representative 
of the majesty of the nation — united by the single purpose 
to perpetuate the Constitution, the Union, and the liber- 
ties of the People. As such, I accept this reception more 
gratefully than I could do did I believe it were tendered to 

IS me as an individual. 

Address in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, February 22, 

1861 

Mr. Cuyler: I am filled with deep emotion at finding 
myself standing in this place, where were collected together 
the wisdom, the patriotism, the devotion to principle, from 
which sprang the institutions under which we live. You 

20 have kindly suggested to me that in my hands is the task of 
restoring peace to our distracted country. I can say in 
return, sir, that all the political sentiments I entertain 
have been drawn, so far as I have been able to draw them, 
from the sentiments which originated in and were given 

25 to the world from this hall. I have never had a feeling, 
politically, that did not spring from the sentiments em- 
bodied in the Declaration of Independence. I have often 
pondered over the dangers which were incurred by the 
men who assembled here and framed and adopted that 

30 Declaration. I have pondered over the toils that were 



Addresses and Letters 91 

endured by the officers and soldiers of the army who 
achieved that independence. I have often inquired of 
myself what great principle or idea it was that kept this 
Confederacy so long together. It was not the mere matter 
of separation of the colonies from the motherland, but that 5 
sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave 
liberty not alone to the people of this country, but hope 
to all the world, for all future time. It was that which 
gave promise that in due time the weights would be lifted 
from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an 10 
equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in the 
Declaration of Independence. Now, my friends, can this 
country be saved on that basis? If it can I will consider 
myself one of the happiest men in the world if I can help 
to save it. If it cannot be saved upon that principle, it 15 
will be truly awful. But if this country cannot be saved 
without giving up that principle, I was about to say I 
would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender 
it. Now, in my view of the present aspect of affairs, there 
is no need of bloodshed and war. There is no necessity 20 
for it. I am not in favor of such a course; and I may say 
in advance that there will be no bloodshed unless it is 
forced upon the government. The government will not 
use force, unless force is used against it. 

My friends, this is wholly an unprepared speech. I did 25 
not expect to be called on to say a word when I came here. 
I supposed I was merely to do something toward raising 
a flag. I may, therefore, have said something indiscreet. 
(Cries of "No, no.'') But I have said nothing but what 
I am willing to live by, and, if it be the pleasure of Almighty 30 
God, to die by. 



FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 

MARCH 4, 1861 

Fellow-Citizens or the United States: In com- 
pliance with a custom as old as the government itself, I 
appear before you to address you briefly, and to take in 
your presence the oath prescribed by the Constitution 
5 of the United States to be taken by the President ''before 
he enters on the execution of his office." 

I do not consider it necessary at present for me to discuss 
the matters of administration about which there is no 
special anxiety or excitement. 

10 Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the 
Southern States that by the accession of a Republican 
administration their property and their peace and personal 
security are to be endangered- There has never been any 
reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most 

15 ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed 
and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly 
all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. 
I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare 
that "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to inter- 

20 fere with the institution of slavery in the States where it 
exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I 
have no inclination to do so." Those who nominated and 
elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this 
and many similar declarations, and I have never recanted 

25 them. And, more than this, they placed in the platform 
for my acceptance, and as a law to themselves and to me, 
the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read: 
^^ Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights 
92 



Addresses and Letters 93 

of the States, and especially the right of each State, to 
order and control its own domestic institutions according 
to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance 
of power on which the perfection and endurance of our 
political fabric depend, and we denounce the lawless in- 5 
vasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, 
no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of 
crimes." 

, I now reiterate these sentiments; and, in doing so, I 
only press upon the public attention the most conclusive 10 
evidence of which the case is susceptible, that the property, 
peace, and security of no section are to be in any wise en- 
dangered by the now incoming administration. I add, too, 
that all the protection which, consistently with the Con- 
stitution and the laws, can be given, will be cheerfully 15 
given to all the States when lawfully demanded, for what- 
ever cause — as cheerfully to one section as to another. 

There is much controversy about the delivering up of 
fugitives from service or labor. The clause I now read is 
as plainly written in the Constitution as any other of its 20 
provisions: 

"No person held to service or labor in one State, under 
the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in conse- 
quence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from 
such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim 25 
of the party to whom such service or labor may be due." 

It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended 
by those who made it for the reclaiming of what we call 
fugitive slaves; and the intention of the lawgiver is the law. 
All members of Congress swear their support to the whole 30 
Constitution — to this provision as much as to any other. 
To the proposition, then, that slaves whose cases come 
within the terms of this clause "shall be delivered up," 
their oaths are unanimous. Now, if they would make the 



94 Abraham Lincoln 

effort in good temper, could they not with nearly equal 
unanimity frame and pass a law by means of which to keep 
good that unanimous oath? 

There is some difference of opinion whether this clause 
5 should be enforced by national or by State authority; but 
surely that difference is not a very material one. If the 
slave is to be surrendered, it can be of but Uttle conse- 
quence to him or to others by which authority it is done. 
And should any one in any case be content that his oath 

lo shall go unkept on a merely unsubstantial controversy as 
to how it shall be kept? 

Again, in any law upon this subject, ought not all the 
safeguards of liberty known in civiHzed and humane juris- 
prudence to be introduced, so that a free man be not, in 

15 any case, surrendered as a slave? And might it not be well 
at the same time to provide by law for the enforcement of 
that clause in the Constitution which guarantees that " the 
citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and 
immunities of citizens in the several States?" 

20 I take the official oath to-day with no mental reserva- 
tions, and with no purpose to construe the Constitution or 
laws by any hypercritical rules. And while I do not choose 
now to specify particular acts of Congress as proper to be 
enforced, I do suggest that it will be much safer for all, 

25 both in official and private stations, to conform to and 
abide by all those acts which stand unrepealed, than to 
violate any of them, trusting to find impunity in having 
them held to be unconstitutional. 

It is seventy-two years since the first inauguration of a 

30 President under our National Constitution. During that 
period fifteen different and greatly distinguished citizens 
have, in succession, administered the executive branch of 
the government. They have conducted it through many 
perils, and generally with great success. Yet, with all this 



Addresses and Letters 95 

scope of precedent, I now enter upon the same task for the 
brief constitutional term of four years under great and 
peculiar difficulty. A disruption of the Federal Union, 
heretofore menaced, is now formidably attempted. 

I hold, that in contemplation of universal law and of the 5 
Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual. Per- 
petuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental 
law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that 
no government proper ever had a provision in its organic 
law for its own termination. Continue to execute all the 10 
express provisions of our National Constitution, and the 
Union will endure for ever — it being impossible to destroy 
it except by some action not provided for in the instrument 
itself. 

Again, if the United States be not a government proper, 15 
but an association of States in the nature of contract 
merely, can it, as a contract, be peaceably unmade by less 
than all the parties who made it? One party to a contract 
may violate it — break it, so to speak; but does it not re- 
quire all to lawfully rescind it? 20 

Descending from these general principles, we find the 
proposition that, in legal contemplation, the Union is per- 
petual confirmed by the history of the Union itself. The 
Union is much older than the Constitution. It was 
formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It 25 
was matured and continued by the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence in 1776. It was further matured and the faith 
of all the then thirteen States expressly plighted and en- 
gaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of 
Confederation in 1778. And, finally, in 1787 one of the 30 
declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Con- 
stitution was 'Ho form a more perfect Union." 

But if the destruction of the Union by one or by a part 
only of the States be lawfully possible, the Union is less 



96 Abraham Lincoln 

perfect than before the Constitution, having lost the vital 
element of perpetuity. 

It follows from these views that no State upon its own 
mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union; that re- 
5 solves and ordinances to that effect are legally void; and 
that acts of violence, within any State or States, against 
the authority of the United States are insurrectionary or 
revolutionary, according to circumstances. 
I therefore consider that, in view of the Constitution and 

10 the laws, the Union is unbroken; and to the extent of my 
abiUty I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly 
enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully 
executed in all the States. Doing this I deem to be only 
a simple duty on my part; and I shall perform it so far as 

15 practicable, unless my rightful masters, the American peo- 
ple, shall withhold the requisite means, or in some authori- 
tative manner direct the contrary. I trust this will not 
be regarded as a menace, but only as the declared purpose 
of the Union that it will constitutionally defend and main- 

20 tain itself. 

In doing this there needs be no bloodshed or violence; 
and there shall be none, unless it is forced upon the na- 
tional authority. The power confided to me will be used 
to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places be- 

25 longing to the government, and to collect the duties and 
imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these ob- 
jects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or 
among the people anywhere. Where hostility to the 
United States, in any interior locality, shall be so great 

30 and universal as to prevent competent resident citizens 
from holding the Federal offices, there will be no attempt to 
force obnoxious strangers among the people for that object. 
While the strict legal right may exist in the government to 
enforce the exercise of these offices, the attempt to do so 



Addresses and Letters 97 

would be so irritating, and so nearly impracticable withal, 
that I deem it better to forego for the time the uses of such 
offices. 

The mails, unless repelled, will continue to be furnished 
in all parts of the Union. So far as possible, the people 5 
everywhere shall have that sense of perfect security which 
is most favorable to calm thought and reflection. The 
course here indicated will be followed unless current events 
and experience shall show a modification or change to be 
proper, and in every case and exigency my best discretion 10 
will be exercised according to circumstances actually exist- 
ing, and with a view and a hope of a peaceful solution of 
the national troubles and the restoration of fraternal sym- 
pathies and affections. 

That there are persons in one section or another who 15 
seek to destroy the Union at all events, and are glad of 
any pretext to do it, I will neither affirm nor deny; but if 
there be such, I need address no word to them. To those, 
however, who really love the Union may I not speak? 

Before entering upon so grave a matter as the destruc- 20 
tion of our national fabric, with all its benefits, its mem- 
ories, and its hopes, would it not be wise to ascertain pre- 
cisely why we do it? Will you hazard so desperate a step 
while there is any possibility that any portion of the ills 
you fly from have no real existence? Will you, while the 25 
certain ills you fly to are greater than all the real ones you 
fly from — will you risk the commission of so fearful a mis- , 
take? 

All profess to be content in the Union if all constitu- 
tional rights can be maintained. Is it true, then, that any 30 
right, plainly written in the Constitution, has been denied? 
I think not. Happily the human mind is so constituted 
that no party can reach to the audacity of doing this. 
Think, if you can, of a single instance in which a plainly 



98 Abraham Lincoln 

written provision of the Constitution has ever been denied. 
If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive 
a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it 
might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution — cer- 

S tainly would if such a right were a vital one. But such 
is not our case. All the vital rights of minorities and of 
individuals are so plainly assured to them by affirmations 
and negations, guarantees and prohibitions, in the Con- 
stitution, that controversies never arise concerning them. 

10 But no organic law can ever be framed with a provision 
specifically applicable to every question which may occur 
in practical administration. No foresight can anticipate, 
nor any document of reasonable length contain, express 
provisions for all possible questions. Shall fugitives from 

15 labor be surrendered by national or by State authority? 
The Constitution does not expressly say. May Congress 
prohibit slavery in the Territories? The Constitution does 
not expressly say. Must Congress protect slavery in the 
Territories? The Constitution does not expressly say. 

20 From questions of this class spring all our constitutional 
controversies, and we divide upon them into majorities 
and minorities. If the minority will not acquiesce, the 
majority must, or the government must cease. There is 
no other alternative; for continuing the government is ac- 

25 quiescence on one side or the other. 

If a minority in such case will secede rather than ac- 
quiesce, they make a precedent which in turn will divide 
and ruin them; for a minority of their own will secede from 
them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such 

30 minority. For instance, why may not any portion of a new 
confederacy a year or two hence arbitrarily secede again, 
precisely as portions of the present Union now claim to 
secede from it? All who cherish disunion sentiments are 
now being educated to the exact temper of doing this. 



Addresses and Letters 99 

Is there such a perfect identity of interest among the 
States to compose a new Union, as to produce harmony 
only, and prevent renewed secession? 

Plainly, the central idea of secession is the essence of 
anarchy. A majority held in restraint by constitutional s 
checks and limitations, and always changing easily with 
deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is 
the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects 
it does, of necessity, fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unan- 
imity is impossible; the rule of a minority, as a permanent 10 
arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the 
majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all 
that is left. 

I do not forget the position, assumed by some, that 
constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme 15 
Court; nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding, 
in any case, upon the parties to a suit, as to the object of 
that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect 
and consideration in all parallel cases by all other depart- 
ments of the government. And while it is obviously pos- 20 
sible that such decision may be erroneous in any given 
case, still the evil effect following it, being limited to that 
particular case, with the chance that it may be overruled 
and never become a precedent for other cases, can better 
be borne than could the evils of a different practice. At 25 
the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the 
policy of the government, upon vital questions affecting 
the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions 
of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in or- 
dinary litigation between parties in personal actions, the 30 
people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to 
that extent practically resigned their government into the 
hands of that eminent tribunal. Nor is there in this view 
any assault upon the court or the judges. It is a duty from 



lOO Abraham Lincoln 

which they may not shrink to decide cases properly brought 
before them, and it is no fault of theirs if others seek to turn 
their decisions to poUtical purposes. 

One section of our country believes slavery is right, and 

5 ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, 
and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial 
dispute. The fugitive-slave clause of the Constitution, 
and the law for the suppression of the foreign slave-trade, 
are each as well enforced, perhaps, as any law can ever 

10 be in a community where the moral sense of the people 
imperfectly supports the law itself. The great body 
of the people abide by the dry legal obligation in both 
cases, and a few break over in each. This, I think, can- 
not be perfectly cured; and it would be worse in both 

15 cases after the separation of the sections than before. 
The foreign slave-trade, now imperfectly suppressed, 
would be ultimately revived, without restriction, in 
one section, while fugitive slaves, now only partially 
surrendered, would riot' be surrendered at all by the 

20 other. 

Physically speaking, we cannot separate. We cannot 
remove our respective sections from each other, nor build 
an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife 
may be divorced, and go out of the presence and beyond 

25 the reach of each other; but the different parts of our coun- 
try cannot do this. They cannot but remain face to face, 
and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue 
between them. Is it possible, then, to make that inter- 
course more advantageous or more satisfactory after sep- 

30 aration than before? Can aliens make treaties easier than 
friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully 
enforced between aliens than laws can among friends? 
Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always; and when, 
after much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you 



Addresses and Letters lOl 

cease fighting, the identical old questions as to terms of in- 
tercourse are again upon you. 

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people 
who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the 
existing government, they can exercise their constitutional 5 
right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dis- 
member or overthrow it. I cannot be ignorant of the fact 
that many worthy and patriotic citizens are desirous of 
having the National Constitution amended. While I 
make no recommendation of amendments, I fully recognize 10 
the rightful authority of the people over the whole sub- 
ject, to be exercised in either of the modes prescribed in the 
instrument itself; and I should, under existing circum- 
stances, favor rather than oppose a fair opportunity being 
afforded the people to act upon it. I will venture to add 15 
that to me the convention mode seems preferable, in that 
it allows amendments to originate with the people them- 
selves, instead of only permitting them to take or reject 
propositions originated by others not especially chosen 
for the purpose, and which might not be precisely such as 20 
they would wish to either accept or refuse. I understand 
a proposed amendment to the Constitution — which amend- 
ment, however, I have not seen — has passed Congress, to 
the effect that the Federal Government shall never inter- 
fere with the domestic institutions of the States, including 25 
that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction 
of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak 
of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding 
such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I 
have no objection to its being made express and irrevo- 30 
cable. 

The chief magistrate derives all his authority from the 
people, and they have conferred none upon him to fix 
terms for the separation of the States. The people them- 



I02 Abraham Lincoln 

selves can do this also if they choose; but the executive as 
such, has nothing to do with it. His duty is to administer 
the present government as it came to his hands, and to 
transmit it, unimpaired by him, to his successor. 
5 Why should there not be a patient confidence in the 
ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal 
hope in the world? In our present differences is either 
party without faith of being in the right? If the Almighty 
Ruler of Nations, with His eternal truth and justice, be 

lo on your side of the North, or on yours of the South, that 
truth and that justice will surely prevail by the judgment 
of this great tribunal of the American people. 

By the frame of the government under which we live, 
this same people have wisely given their public servants 

15 but little power for mischief; and have, with equal wisdom, 
provided for the return of that little to their own hands at 
very short intervals. While the people retain their virtue 
and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme wicked- 
ness or folly, can very seriously injure the government in 

20 the short space of four years. 

My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well 
upon this whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by 
taking time. If there be an object to hurry any of you in 
hot haste to a step which you would never take delib- 

25 erately, that object will be frustrated by taking time; but 
no good object can be frustrated by it. Such of you as 
are now dissatisfied still have the old Constitution unim- 
paired, and, on the sensitive point, the laws of your own 
framing under it; while the new administration will have 

30 no immediate power, if it would, to change either. If it 
were admitted that you who are dissatisfied hold the right 
side in the dispute, there is no single good reason for 
precipitate action. Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, 
and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this 



Addresses and Letters 103 

favored land, are still competent to adjust in the same way 
all our present difficulty. 

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and 
not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The gov- 
ernment will not assail you. You can have no conflict s 
without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath 
registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I 
shall have the most solemn one to ''preserve, protect, and 
defend it." 

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. 10 
We must not be enemies. Though passion may have 
strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The 
mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle- 
field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearth- 
stone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of 15 
the Union when again touched, as they surely will be, by 
the better angels of our nature. 



LETTER TO WILLIAM H. SEWARD 

Executive Mansion, April i, 1861 

Hon. W. H. Seward. 

My Dear Sir: Since parting with you I have been con- 
sidering your paper dated this day, and entitled ''Some 
5 Thoughts for the President's Consideration." The first 
proposition in it is, "First, We are at the end of a month's 
administration, and yet without a poHcy either domestic 
or foreign." 

At the beginning of that month, in the inaugural, I said: 
10 "The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, 
and possess the property and places belonging to the gov- 
ernment, and to collect the duties and imposts." This 
had your distinct approval at the time; and, taken in con- 
nection with the order I immediately gave General Scott, 
15 directing him to employ every means in his power to 
strengthen and hold the forts, comprises the exact domestic 
policy you now urge, with the single exception that it does 
not propose to abandon Fort Sumter. 

Again, I do not perceive how the reinforcement of Fort 
20 Sumter would be done on a slavery or a party issue, while 
that of Fort Pickens would be on a more national and 
patriotic one. 

The news received yesterday in regard to St. Domingo 
certainly brings a new item within the range of our foreign 
25 policy; but up to that time we have been preparing cir- 
culars and instruction to ministers and the like, all in per- 
fect harmony, without even a suggestion that we had no 
foreign policy. 

104 



Addresses and Letters 105 

Upon your closing propositions — that "whatever policy 
we adopt, there must be an energetic prosecution of it." 

"For this purpose it must be somebody's business to 
pursue and direct it incessantly." 

" Either the President must do it himself, and be all the 5 
while active in it, or 

"Devolve it on some member of his cabinet. Once 
adopted, debates on it must end, and all agree and abide" — 
I remark that if this must be done, I must do it. When a 
general line of policy is adopted, I apprehend there is no lo 
danger of its being changed without good reason, or con- 
tinuing to be a subject of unnecessary debate; still, upon 
points arising in its progress I wish, and suppose I am en- 
titled to have, the advice of all the cabinet. 

Your obedient servant, 15 

A. Lincoln. 



LETTER TO GENERAL McCLELLAN 

Executive Mansion, Washington 

February 3, 1862 
Major-General McClellan. 

My Dear Sir: You and I have distinct and different 
5 plans for a movement of the Army of the Potomac — yours 
to be down the Chesapeake, up the Rappahannock to 
Urbana, and across land to the terminus of the railroad 
on the York River; mine to move directly to a point on 
the railroad southwest of Manassas. 
10 If you will give me satisfactory answers to the following 
questions, I shall gladly yield my plan to yours. 

First. Does not your plan involve a greatly larger ex- 
penditure of time and money than mine? 
Second. Wherein is a victory more certain by your plan 
15 than mine? 

Third. Wherein is a victory more valuable by your plan 
than mine? 

Fourth. In fact, would it not be less valuable in this, that 
it would break no great line of the enemy's communica- 
20 tions, while mine would? 

Fifth. In case of disaster, would not a retreat be more 
difficult by your plan than mine? 

Yours truly, 

Abraham Lincoln. 



106 



LETTER TO HORACE GREELEY 

Executive- Mansion, Washington 

August 2 2, 1862 
Hon. Horace Greeley. 

Dear Sir: I have just read yours of the 19th, addressed 
to myself through the New York Tribune. If there be in 5 
it any statements or assumptions of fact which I may know 
to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert them. 
If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be 
falsely drawn, I do not, now and here, argue against them. 
If there be perceptible in it an impatient and dictatorial 10 
tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend whose heart 
I have always supposed to be right. 

As to the poUcy I "seem to be pursuing," as you say, I 
have not meant to leave any one in doubt. 

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest 15 
way under the Constitution. The sooner the national 
authority can be restored, the nearer the Union will be 
"the Union as it was." If there be those who would not 
save the Union unless they could at the same time save 
slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who 20 
would not save the Union unless they could at the same 
time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My para- 
mount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is 
not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save 
the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if 25 
I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, 
I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the 
colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the 
Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not 

107 



io8 Abraham Lincoln 

believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less 
whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause. 
I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors, and 
I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be 
true views. 

I have here stated my purpose according to my view of 
official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft- 
expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be 
free. 

Yours, 

A. Lincoln. 



LETTER TO GENERAL JOSEPH HOOKER 

Executive Mansion, Washington, D. C. 

January 2, 1863 
Major-General Hooker. 

General: I have placed you at the head of the Army of 
the Potomac. Of course I have done this upon what ap- 5 
pear to me to be sufficient reasons, and yet I think it best 
for you to know that there are some things in regard to 
which I am not quite satisfied with you. I believe you 
to be a brave and skilful soldier, which of course I like. I 
also believe you do not mix politics with your profession, 10 
in which you are right. You have confidence in yourself, 
which is a valuable if not an indispensable quality. You 
are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, does good 
rather than harm; but I think that during General Burn- 
side's command of the army you have taken counsel of 15 
your ambition and thwarted him as much as you could, in 
which you did a great wrong to the country and to a most 
meritorious and honorable brother officer. I have heard, 
in such a way as to believe it, of your recently saying that 
both the army and the government needed a dictator. 20 
Of course it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have 
given you the command. Only those generals who gain 
successes can set up dictators. What I now ask of you 
is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship. The 
government will support you to the utmost of its ability, 25 
which is neither more nor less than it has done and will do 
for all commanders. I much fear that the spirit which 
you have aided to infuse into the army, of criticising their 
commander and withholding confidence from him, will 

109 



no Abraham Lincoln 

now turn upon you. I shall assist you as far as I can to 
put it down. Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were alive 
again, could get any good out of an army while such a 
spirit prevails in it; and now beware of rashness. Beware 
of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go for- 
ward and give us victories. 

Yours very truly, 

A. Lincoln. 



REPLY TO A COMMITTEE FROM CHICAGO 
ON THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION 

SEPTEMBER 13, 1862 

The subject presented in the memorial is one upon 
which I have thought much for weeks past, and I may even 
say for months. I am approached with the most opposite 
opinions and advice, and that by religious men who are 
equally certain that they represent the divine will. I am 5 
sure that either the one or the other class is mistaken in 
that belief, and perhaps in some respects both. I hope it 
will not be irreverent for me to say that if it is probable 
that God would reveal His will to others on a point so con- 
nected with my duty, it might be supposed He would reveal 10 
it directly to me; for, unless I am more deceived in myself 
than I often am, it is my earnest desire to know the will of 
Providence in this matter. And if I can learn what it is, 
I will do it. These are not, however, the days of miracles, 
and I suppose it will be granted that I am not to expect a 15 
direct revelation. I must study the plain physical facts 
of the case, ascertain what is possible, and learn what 
appears to be wise and right. 

The subject is difficult, and good men do not agree. For 
instance, the other day four gentlemen of standing and 20 
intelligence from New York called as a delegation on busi- 
ness connected with the war; but, before leaving, two of 
them earnestly beset me to proclaim general emancipation; 
upon which the other two at once attacked them. You 
know also that the last session of Congress had a decided 25 
majority of antislavery men, yet they could not unite on 
this policy. And the same is true of the religious people. 



112 Abraham Lincoln 

Why, the rebel soldiers are praying with a great deal more 
earnestness, I fear, than our own troops, and expecting 
God to favor their side; for one of our soldiers who had 
been taken prisoner told Senator Wilson a few days since 
5 that he met with nothing so discouraging as the evident 
sincerity of those he was among in their prayers. But we 
will talk over the merits of the case. 

What good would a proclamation of emancipation from 
me do, especially as we are now situated? I do not want 

lo to issue a document that the whole world will see must 
necessarily be inoperative, like the Pope's bull against 
the comet. Would my word free the slaves, when I cannot 
even enforce the Constitution in the rebel States? Is 
there a single court, or magistrate, or individual that would 

IS be influenced by it there? And what reason is there to 
think it would have any greater effect upon the slaves than 
the late law of Congress, which I approved, and which 
offers protection and freedom to the slaves of rebel masters 
who come within our lines? Yet I cannot learn that that 

20 law has caused a single slave to come over to us. And 
suppose they could be induced by a proclamation of free- 
dom from me to throw themselves upon us, what should 
we do with them? How can we feed and care for such a 
multitude? General Butler wrote me a few days since that 

25 he was issuing more rations to the slaves who have rushed 
to him than to all the white troops under his command. 
They eat, and that is all; though it is true General Butler is 
feeding the whites also by the thousand, for it nearly 
amounts to a famine there. If, now, the pressure of the 

30 war should call off our forces from New Orleans to defend 
some other point, what is to prevent the masters from re- 
ducing the blacks to slavery again? For I am told that 
whenever the rebels take any black prisoners, free or slave, 
they immediately auction them off. They did so with 



Addresses and Letters 113 

those they took from a boat that was aground in the Ten- 
nessee River a few days ago. And then I am very ungen- 
erously attacked for it! For instance, when, after the late 
battles at and near Bull Run, an expedition went out from 
Washington under a flag of truce to bury the dead and 5 
bring in the wounded, and the rebels seized the blacks 
who went along to help, and sent them into slavery, 
Horace Greeley said in his paper that the government 
would probably do nothing about it. What could I do? 

Now, then, tell me, if you please, what possible result of 10 
good would follow the issuing of such a proclamation as 
you desire? Understand, I raise no objections against it 
on legal or constitutional grounds; for, as commander-in- 
chief of the army and navy, in time of war I suppose I 
have a right to take any measure which may best subdue 15 
the enemy; nor do I urge objections of a moral nature, in 
view of possible consequences of insurrection and massacre 
at the South. I view this matter as a practical war meas- 
ure, to be decided on according to the advantages or dis- 
advantages it may offer to the suppression of the rebellion. 20 

I admit that slavery is the root of the rebelUon, or at 
least its sine qua non. The ambition of politicians may 
have instigated them to act, but they would have been 
impotent without slavery as their instrument. I will also 
concede that emancipation would help us in Europe, and 25 
convince them that we are incited by something more than 
ambition. I grant, further, that it would help somewhat 
at the North, though not so much, I fear, as you and those 
you represent imagine. Still, some additional strength 
would be added in that way to the war; and then, unques- 30 
tionably, it would weaken the rebels by drawing off their 
laborers, which is of great importance; but I am not so sure 
we could do much with the blacks. If we were to arm 
them, I fear that in a few weeks the arms would be in the 



114 Abraham Lincoln 

hands of the rebels; and, indeed, thus far we have not had 
arms enough to equip our white troops. I will mention 
another thing, though it meet only your scorn and con- 
tempt. There are fifty thousand bayonets in the Union 
5 armies from the border slave States. It would be a serious 
matter if, in consequence of a proclamation such as you 
desire, they should go over to the rebels. I do not think 
they all would — not so many, indeed, as a year ago, or as 
six months ago — not so many to-day as yesterday. Every 

lo day increases their Union feeling. They are also getting 
their pride enlisted, and want to beat the rebels. Let me 
say one thing more. I think you should admit that we al- 
ready have an important principle to rally and unite the 
people, in fact that constitutional government is at stake. 

15 This is a fundamental idea going down about as deep as 
anything. 

Do not misunderstand me because I have mentioned 
these objections. They indicate the difficulties that have 
thus far prevented my action in some such way as you 

20 desire. I have not decided against a proclamation of 
Uberty to the slaves, but hold the matter under advise- 
ment; and I can assure you that the subject is on my mind, 
by day and night, more than any other. Whatever shall 
appear to be God's will, I will do. I trust that in the free- 

25 dom with which I have canvassed your views I have not 
in any respect injured your feelings. 



THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION 
JANUARY I, 1863 

Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in 
the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and 
sixty-two, a proclamation was issued by the President of 
the United States containing, among other things, the 
following, to wit: 5 

"That on the first day of January, in the year of our 
Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all 
persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part 
of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion 
against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, 10 
and forever free; and the Executive Government of the 
United States, including the military and naval authority 
thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such 
persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, 
or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their 15 
actual freedom. 

"That the Executive will, on the first day of January 
aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts 
of States, if any, in which the people thereof respectively 
shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and 20 
the fact that any State, or the people thereof, shall on that 
day be in good faith represented in the Congress of the 
United States by members chosen thereto at elections 
wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State 
shall have participated, shall in the absence of strong 25 
countervailing testimony be deemed conclusive evidence 
that such State and the people thereof are not then in re- 
bellion against the United States." 

IIS 



Ii6 Abraham Lincoln 

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the 
United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as 
commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United 
States, in time of actual armed rebellion against the au- 
5 thority and government of the United States, and as a fit 
and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, 
do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one 
thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance 
with my purpose so to do, publicly proclaimed for the full 

lo period of loo days from the day first above mentioned, 

order and designate as the States and parts of States 

wherein the people thereof, respectively, are this day in 

rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit : 

Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the parishes of St. 

15 Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, 
St. James, Ascension, Assumption, Terre Bonne, La- 
fourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the 
city of New Orleans), Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, 
Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia 

20 (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Vir- 
ginia, and also the counties of Berkeley, Accomac, North- 
ampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, 
including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth), and 
which excepted parts are for the present left precisely as 

25 if this proclamation were not issued. 

And by virtue of the power and for the purpose afore- 
said, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves 
within said designated States and parts of States are, and 
henceforward shall be, free; and that the executive govern- 

30 ment of the United States, including the military and 
naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the 
freedom of said persons. 

And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be 
free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self- 



Addresses and Letters 117 

defence ; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when 
allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages. 

And I further declare and make known that such per- 
sons of suitable condition will be received into the armed 
service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, 5 
stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts 
in said service. 

And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of 
justice, warranted by the Constitution upon military 
necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind 10 
and the gracious favor of Almighty God. 



REPLY TO THE WORKINGMEN OF 
MANCHESTER 

JANUARY 19, 1863 

I HAVE the honor to acknowledge the receipt of the ad- 
dress and resolutions which you sent me on the eve of the 
New Year. When I came, on the 4th of March, 1861, 
through a free and constitutional election, to preside in 
5 the government of the United States, the country was 
found at the verge of civil war. Whatever might have been 
the cause, or whosesoever the fault, one duty paramount 
to all others was before me; namely, to maintain and pre- 
serve at once the Constitution and the integrity of the 

10 Federal Republic. A conscientious purpose to perform this 
duty is the key to all the measures of administration which 
have been, and to all which will hereafter be, pursued. 
Under our frame of government and by my official oath, 
I could not depart from this purpose if I would. It is not 

15 always in the power of governments to enlarge or restrict 
the scope of moral results which follow the policies that 
they may deem it necessary for the public safety from 
time to time to adopt. 

I have understood well that the duty of self-preservation 

20 rests solely with the American people; but I have at the 
same time been aware that favor or disfavor of foreign 
nations might have a material influence in enlarging or 
prolonging the struggle with disloyal men in which the 
country is engaged. A fair examination of history has 

25 served to authorize a belief that the past actions and in- 
fluences of the United States were generally regarded as 

11^ 



Addresses and Letters 119 

having been beneficial toward mankind. I have therefore 
reckoned upon the forbearance of nations. Circumstances, 
to some of which you kindly allude, induce me especially 
to expect that if justice and good faith should be practised 
by the United States, they would encounter no hostile in- s 
fluence on the part of Great Britain. It is now a pleasant 
duty to acknowledge the demonstration you have given 
of your desire that a spirit of amity and peace toward this 
country may prevail in the councils of your queen, who is 
respected and esteemed in your own country only more 10 
than she is by the kindred nation which has its home on 
this side of the Atlantic. 

I know and deeply deplore the sufferings which the 
workingmen at Manchester, and in all Europe, are called 
to endure in this crisis. It has been often and studiously 15 
represented that the attempt to overthrow this govern- 
ment, which was built upon the foundation of human 
rights, and to substitute for it one which should rest 
exclusively on the basis of human slavery, was Hkely to 
obtain the favor of Europe. Through the action of our 20 
disloyal citizens, the workingmen of Europe have been sub- 
jected to severe trials, for the purpose of forcing their sanc- 
tion to that attempt. Under the circumstances, I cannot 
but regard your decisive utterances upon the question as 
an instance of sublime Christian heroism, which has not 25 
been surpassed in any age or in any country. It is indeed 
an energetic and reinspiring assurance of the inherent 
power of truth, and of the ultimate and universal triumph 
of justice, humanity, and freedom. I do not doubt that 
the sentiments you have expressed will be sustained by 30 
your great nation; and, on the other hand, I have no hesi- 
tation in assuring you that they will excite admiration, 
esteem, and the most reciprocal feeUngs of friendship 
among the American people. I hail this interchange of 



I20 Abraham Lincoln 

sentiment, therefore, as an augury that whatever else may 
happen, whatever misfortune may befall your country or 
my own, the peace and friendship w^hich now exist between 
the two nations will be, as it shall be my desire to make 
them, perpetual. 



REPLY TO J. C. CONKLING 
DATED AUGUST 26, 1863 

My dear Sir : Your letter inviting me to attend a mass- 
meeting of unconditional Union men, to be held at the 
capital of Illinois on the third day of September, has been 
received. It would be very agreeable to me to thus meet 
my old friends at my own home, but I cannot just now be 5 
absent from here so long as a visit there would require. 

The meeting is to be of all those who maintain uncondi- 
tional devotion to the Union ; and I am sure my old political 
friends will thank me for tendering, as I do, the nation's 
gratitude to those and other noble men whom no partisan 10 
malice or partisan hope can make false to the nation's life. 

There are those who are dissatisfied with me. To such 
I would say: You desire peace, and you blame me that we 
do not have it. But how can we attain it? There are but 
three conceivable ways. First, to suppress the rebellion 15 
by force of arms. This I am trying to do. Are you for it? 
If you are, so far we are agreed. If you are not for it, a 
second way is to give up the Union. I am against this. 
Are you for it? If you are, you should say so plainly. If 
you are not for force, nor yet for dissolution, there only 20 
remains some imaginable compromise. I do not believe 
any compromise embracing maintenance of the Union is 
now possible. All I learn leads to a directly opposite be- 
lief. The strength of the rebellion is its military, its army. 
That army dominates all the country and all the people 25 
within its range. Any offer of terms made by any man or 
men within that range, in opposition to that army, is simply 
nothing for the present, because such man or men have 

121 



122 Abraham Lincoln 

no power whatever to enforce their side of a compromise, if 
one were made with them. 

To illustrate: Suppose refugees from the South and 
peace men of the North get together in convention, and 

5 frame and proclaim a compromise embracing a restoration 
of the Union. In what way can that compromise be used 
to keep Lee's army out of Pennsylvania? Meade's army 
can keep Lee's out of Pennsylvania, and, I think, can ul- 
timately drive it out of existence. But no paper com- 

10 promise, to which the controllers of Lee's army are not 
agreed, can at all affect that army. In an effort at such 
compromise we should waste time which the enemy would 
improve to our disadvantage; and that would be all. A 
compromise, to be effective, must be made either with those 

15 who control the rebel army, or with the people first lib- 
erated from the domination of that army by the success 
of our own army. Now, allow me to assure you that no 
word or intimation from that rebel army, or from any of 
the men controlling it, in relation to any peace compromise, 

2o has ever come to my knowledge or belief. All charges and 
insinuations to the contrary are deceptive and groundless. 
And I promise you that if any such proposition shall here- 
after come, it shall not be rejected and kept a secret from 
you. I freely acknowledge myself the servant of the peo- 

25 pie, according to the bond of ser\dce, — the United States 

Constitution, — and that, as such, I am responsible to them. 

But to be plain. You are dissatisfied with me about the 

negro. Quite likely there is a difference of opinion between 

you and myself upon that subject. I certainly wish that 

30 all men could be free, while I suppose you do not. Yet I 
have neither adopted nor proposed any measure which 
is not consistent with even your views, provided you are 
for the Union. I suggested compensated emancipation, 
to which, you replied, you wished not to be taxed to buy 



Addresses and Letters 123 

negroes. But I had not asked you to be taxed to buy 
negroes, except in such way as to save you from greater 
taxation to save the Union exclusively by other means. 

You dislike the Emancipation Proclamation, and per- 
haps would have it retracted. You say it is unconstitu- 5 
tional. I think differently. I think the Constitution in- 
vests its commander-in-chief with the law of war in time 
of war. The most that can be said — if so much — is that 
slaves are property. Is there, has there ever been, any 
question that, by law of war, property, both of enemies 10 
and friends, may be taken when needed? And is it not 
needed whenever taking it helps us or hurts the enemy? 
Armies the world over destroy enemies' property when 
they cannot use it, and even destroy their own to keep 
it from the enemy. CiviHzed belligerents do all in their 15 
power to help themselves or hurt the enemy, except a few 
things regarded as barbarous or cruel. Among the excep- 
tions are the massacre of vanquished foes and non- 
combatants, male and female. 

But the proclamation, as law, either is valid or is not 20 
valid. If it is not valid, it needs no retraction. If it is 
valid, it cannot be retracted any more than the dead man 
can be brought to life. Some of you profess to think its 
retraction would operate favorably for the Union. Why 
better after the retraction than before the issue? There 25 
was more than a year and a half of trial to suppress the 
rebellion before the proclamation was issued, the last one 
hundred days of which passed under an explicit notice that 
it was coming, unless averted by those in revolt turning 
to their allegiance. The war has certainly progressed as 30 
favorably for us since the issue of the proclamation as 
before. I know, as fully as one can know the opinions of 
others, that some of the commanders of our armies in the 
field who have given us our most important success, believe 



124 Abraham Lincoln 



1 



the emancipation policy and the use of colored troops con- 
stitute the heaviest blow yet dealt to the rebellion, and 
that at least one of these important successes could not 
have been achieved when it was but for the aid of black 

. 5 soldiers. Among the commanders holding these views are 
some who have never had any affinity with what is called 
Abolitionism or with RepubUcan party politics, but who 
hold them purely as military opinions. I submit these 
opinions as being entitled to some weight against the ob- 

lo jections often urged, that emancipation and arming the 
blacks are unwise as military measures, and were not 
adopted as such in good faith. 

You say you will not fight to free negroes. Some of them 
seem willing to fight for you; but no matter. Fight you, 

15 then, exclusively to save the Union. I issued the proclama- 
tion on purpose to aid you in saving the Union. Whenever 
you shall have conquered all resistance to the Union, if I 
shall urge you to continue fighting, it will be an apt time 
then for you to declare you will not fight to free negroes. 

20 I thought that in your struggle for the Union, to what- 
ever extent the negroes should cease helping the enemy, to 
that extent it weakened the enemy in his resistance to you. 
Do you think differently? I thought that whatever negroes 
could be got to do as soldiers leaves just so much less for 

25 white soldiers to do in saving the Union. Does it appear 
otherwise to you? But negroes, Hke other people, act upon 
motives. Why should they do anything for us, if we will 
do nothing for them? If they stake their Uves for us, they 
must be prompted by the strongest motive, even the 

30 promise of freedom. And the promise being made, must 
be kept. 

The signs look better. The Father of Waters again goes 
unvexed to the sea. Thanks to the great Northwest for it. 
Nor yet wholly to them. Three hundred miles up they 



Addresses and Letters 125 

met New England, Empire, Keystone, and Jersey hewing 
their way right and left. The sunny South, too, in more 
colors than one, also lent a hand. On the spot, their part 
of the history was jotted down in black and white. The 
job was done by a great nation, and let none be banned who 5 
bore an honorable part in it. And while those who cleared 
the great river may well be proud, even that is not all. 
It is hard to say that anything has been more bravely and 
well done than at Antietam, Murfreesboro, Gettysburg, 
and on many fields of lesser note. Nor must Uncle Sam's 10 
web feet be forgotten. At all the watery margins they have 
been present. Not only on the deep sea, the broad bay, and 
the rapid river, but also up the narrow, muddy bayou, and 
wherever the ground was a little damp, they have been 
and made their tracks. Thanks to all, — for the great re- 15 
public, for the principle it lives by and keeps aUve, for 
man's vast future, — thanks to all. 

Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will 
come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to be worth 
the keeping in all future time. It will then have been 20 
proved that among freemen there can be no successful 
appeal from the ballot to the bullet, and that they who 
take such appeal are sure to lose their case and pay the 
cost. And then there will be some black men who can re- 
member that with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and 25 
steady eye, and well-poised bayonet, they have helped 
mankind on this great consummation, while I fear there 
will be some white ones unable to forget that with malig- 
nant heart and deceitful speech they strove to hinder it. 

Still, let us not be oversanguine of a speedy, final 30 
triumph. Let us be quite sober. Let us diligently apply 
the means, never doubting that a just God, in His own good 
time, will give us the rightful result. 



ADDRESS AT GETTYSBURG 

NOVEMBER 19, 1863 

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought 
forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Hberty, 
and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created 
equal. 

5 Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether 
that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, 
can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that 
war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as 
a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that 

10 that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper 
that we should do this. 

But, in a larger sense we cannot dedicate — we cannot 
consecrate — we cannot hallow — this ground. The brave 
men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated 

15 it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world 
will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it 
can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, 
rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which 
they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It 

20 is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task re- 
maining before us — that from these honored dead we take 
increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the 
last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve 
that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, 

25 under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that 
government of the people, by the people, for the people, 
shall not perish from the earth. 

126 



LETTER TO GENERAL U. S. GRANT 

Executive Mansion, Washington 

April 30, 1864 
Lieutenant General Grant: 

Not expecting to see you again before the spring cam- 
paign opens, I wish to express in this way my entire satis- 5 
faction with what you have done up to this time, so far as 
I understand it. The particulars of your plans I neither 
know nor seek to know. You are vigilant and self-reliant; 
and, pleased with this, I wish not to obtrude any con- 
straints or restraints upon you. While I am very anxious 10 
that any great disaster or capture of our men in great 
numbers shall be avoided, I know these points are less 
likely to escape your attention than they would be mine. 
If there is anything wanting which is within my power to 
give, do not fail to let me know it. And now, with a brave 15 
army and a just cause, may God sustain you. 

Yours very truly, 

A. Lincoln. 



127 



LETTER TO MRS. BIXBY OF BOSTON 

Executive Mansion, Washington 

November 21, 1864 
Mrs. Bixby, Boston, Massachusetts. 

Dear Madam: I have been shown in the files of the War 
5 Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of 
Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who 
have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak 
and fruitless must be any words of mine which should at- 
tempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelm- 
10 ing. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the con- 
solation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic 
they died to save. I pray that our heavenly Father may 
assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you 
only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the 
15 solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a 
sacrifice upon the altar of freedom. 

Yours very sincerely and respectfully, 
Abraham Lincoln. 



128 



THE SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS 
MARCH 4, 1865 

Fellow- Countrymen : At this second appearing to take 
the oath of the presidential office, there is less occasion for 
an extended address than there was at the first. Then a 
statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued, 
seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four s 
years, during which public declarations have been con- 
stantly called forth on every point and phase of the great 
contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the 
energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. 
The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly de- 10 
pends, is as well known to the public as to myself; and it is, 
I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. 
With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it 
is ventured. 

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all 15 
thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil 
war. All dreaded it — all sought to avert it. While the in- 
augural address was being delivered from this place, de- 
voted altogether to saving the Union without war, insur- 
gent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without 20 
war — seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, 
by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of 
them would make war rather than let the nation survive; 
and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. 
And the war came. 25 

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, 
not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in 
the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar 

129 



130 Abraham Lincoln 

and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, 
somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, per- 
petuate, and extend this interest was the object for which 
the insurgents would rend the Union even by war; v/hile 
5 the Government claimed no right to do more than to re- 
strict the territorial enlargement of it. 

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the 
duration which it has already attained. Neither antici- 
pated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or 

10 even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked 
for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and 
astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the 
same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It 
may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just 

15 God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat 

of other men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be not 

judged. The prayers of both could not be answered — that 

of neither has been answered fully. 

The Almighty has His own purpose. "Woe unto the 

20 world because of offenses ! for it must needs be that offenses 
come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." 
If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those 
offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, 
but which, having continued through His appointed time, 

25 He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North 
and South this terrible war, as the woe to those by whom 
the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure 
from those divine attributes which the believers in a living 
God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope — fer- 

30 vently do we pray — that this mighty scourge of war may 
speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue 
until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred 
and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until 
every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by 



Addresses and Letters 131 

another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand 
years ago, so still it must be said, ^'The judgments of the 
Lord are true and righteous altogether." 

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firm- 
ness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us 
strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the na- 
tion's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the 
battle, and for his widow, and his orphan — to do all which 
may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among 
ourselves, and with all nations. 



LAST PUBLIC ADDRESS 

APRIL II, 1865 

We meet this evening not in sorrow, but in gladness of 
heart. The evacuation of Petersburg and Richmond, and 
the surrender of the principal insurgent army, give hope of 
a righteous and speedy peace, whose joyous expression 
S cannot be restrained. In the midst of this, however. He 
from whom all blessings flow must not be forgotten. A 
call for a national thanksgiving is being prepared, and will 
be duly promulgated. Nor must those whose harder part 
gave us the cause of rejoicing be overlooked. Their honors 

10 must not be parcelled out with others. I myself was near 
the front, and had the high pleasure of transmitting much 
of the good news to you; but no part of the honor for plan 
or execution is mine. To General Grant, his skilful officers 
and brave men, all belongs. The gallant navy stood ready, 

IS but was not in reach to take active part. 

By these recent successes the reinauguration of the 
national authority — reconstruction — which has had a large 
share of thought from the first, is pressed more closely 
upon our attention. It is fraught with great difficulty. 

20 Unlike a case of war between independent nations, there 
is no authorized organ for us to treat with — no one man 
has authority to give up the rebellion for any other man. 
We simply must begin with and mold from disorganized 
and discordant elements. Nor is it a small additional em- 

25 barrassment that we, the loyal people, differ among our- 
selves as to the mode, manner, and measure of reconstruc- 
tion. As a general rule, I abstain from reading the reports 
of attacks upon myself, wishing not to be provoked by that 

132 



Addresses and Letters 133 

to which I cannot properly offer an answer. In spite of 
this precaution, however, it comes to my knowledge that 
I am much censured for some supposed agency in setting 
up and seeking to sustain the new State government of 
Louisiana. 5 

In this I have done just so much as, and no more than, 
the public knows. In the annual message of December, 
1863, and in the accompanying proclamation, I presented 
a plan of reconstruction, as the phrase goes, which I 
promised, if adopted by any State, should be acceptable 10 
to and sustained by the executive government of the na- 
tion. I distinctly stated that this was not the only plan 
which might possibly be acceptable, and also distinctly 
protested that the executive claimed no right to say when 
or whether members should be admitted to seats in Con- 15 
gress from such States. This plan was in advance sub- 
mitted to the then Cabinet and distinctly approved by 
every member of it. One of them suggested that I should 
then and in that connection apply the Emancipation 
Proclamation to the theretofore excepted parts of Virginia 20 
and Louisiana; that I should drop the suggestion about 
apprenticeship for freed people, and that I should omit 
the protest against my own power in regard to the admis- 
sion of members to Congress. But even he approved every 
part and parcel of the plan which has since been employed 25 
or touched by the action of Louisiana. 

The new constitution of Louisiana, declaring emancipa- 
tion for the whole State, practically applies the proclama- 
tion to the part previously excepted. It does not adopt 
apprenticeship for freed people, and it is silent, as it could 30 
not well be otherwise, about the admission of members to 
Congress. So that, as it applies to Louisiana, every mem- 
ber of the Cabinet fully approved the plan. The message 
went to Congress, and I received many commendations 



134 Abraham Lincoln 

of the plan, written and verbal, and not a single objection 
to it from any professed emancipationist came to my 
knowledge until after the news reached Washington that 
the people of Louisiana had begun to move in accordance 
5 with it. From about July, 1862, 1 had corresponded with 
different persons supposed to be interested in seeking a 
reconstruction of a State government for Louisiana. 
When the message of 1863, with the plan before men- 
tioned, reached New Orleans, General Banks wrote me that 

10 he was confident that the people, with his military co- 
operation, would reconstruct substantially on that plan. I 
wrote to him and some of them to try it. They tried it, and 
the result is known. Such has been my only agency in 
getting up the Louisiana government. 

15 As to sustaining it, my promise is out, as before stated. 
But as bad promises are better broken than kept, I shall 
treat this as a bad promise, and break it whenever I shall 
be convinced that keeping it is adverse to the public in- 
terest; but I have not yet been so convinced. I have been 

20 shown a letter on this subject, supposed to be an able one, 
in which the writer expresses regret that my mind has not 
seemed to be definitely fixed on the question whether the 
seceded States, so called, are in the Union or out of it. It 
would perhaps add astonishment to his regret were he to 

25 learn that since I have found professed Union men en- 
deavoring to make that question, I have purposely for- 
borne any public expression upon it. As appears to me, 
that question has not been, nor yet is, a practically ma- 
terial one, and that any discussion of it, while it thus re- 

30 mains practically immaterial, could have no effect other 
than the mischievous one of dividing our friends. As yet, 
whatever it may hereafter become, that question is bad 
as the basis of a controversy, and good for nothing at all — 
a merely pernicious abstraction. 



Addresses and Letters 135 

We all agree that the seceded States, so called, are out 
of their proper practical relation with the Union, and that 
the sole object of the government, civil and military, in 
regard to those States is to again get them into that proper 
practical relation. I believe that it is not only possible, 5 
but in fact easier, to do this without deciding or even con- 
sidering whether these States have ever been out of the 
Union, than with it. Finding themselves safely at home 
it would be utterly immaterial whether they had ever been 
abroad. Let us all join in doing the acts necessary to re- 10 
storing the proper practical relations between these States 
and the Union, and each forever after innocently indulge 
his own opinion whether in doing the acts he brought the 
States from without into the Union, or only gave them 
proper assistance, they never having been out of it. The 15 
amount of constituency, so to speak, on which the new 
Louisiana government rests would be more satisfactory to 
all if it contained 50,000, or 30,000, or even 20,000, instead 
of only about 12,000, as it does. It is also unsatisfactory 
to some that the elective franchise is not given to the 20 
colored man. I would myself prefer that it were now con- 
ferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our 
cause as soldiers. 

Still, the question is not whether the Louisiana govern- 
ment, as it stands, is quite all that is desirable. The ques- 25 
tion is, will it be wiser to take it as it is and help to improve 
it, or to reject and disperse it? Can Louisiana be brought 
into proper practical relations with the Union sooner by 
sustaining or discarding her new State government? Some 
twelve thousand voters in the heretofore slave State of 30 
Louisiana have sworn allegiance to the Union, assumed to 
be the rightful political power of the State, held elections, 
organized a State government, adopted a free-State con- 
stitution, giving the benefit of public schools equally to 



136 Abraham Lincoln 

black and white, and empowering the legislature to confer 
the elective franchise upon the colored man. Their legis- 
lature has already voted to ratify the constitutional 
amendment recently passed by Congress, abolishing slav- 
5 ery throughout the nation. These 12,000 persons are thus 
fully committed to the Union and to perpetual freedom in 
the State — committed to the very things and nearly all the 
things, the nation wants — and they ask the nation's recog- 
nition and its assistance to make good their committal. 

10 Now, if we reject and spurn them, we do our utmost to 
disorganize and disperse them. We, in effect, say to the 
white man: You are worthless or worse; we will neither 
help you, nor be helped by you. To the blacks we say: 
This cup of liberty which these, your old masters, hold to 

15 your lips we will dash from you, and leave you to the 
chances of gathering the spilled and scattered contents in 
some vague and undefined when, where, and how. If this 
course, discouraging and paralyzing both white and black, 
has any tendency to bring Louisiana into proper practical 

20 relations with the Union, I have so far been unable to per- 
ceive it. If, on the contrary, we recognize and sustain the 
new government of Louisiana, the converse of all this is 
made true. We encourage the hearts and nerve the arms 
of the 12,000 to adhere to their work, and argue for it, 

25 and proselyte for it, and fight for it, and feel it, and grow it, 

and ripen it to a complete success. The colored man, too, 

V in seeing all united for him, is inspired with vigilance, and 

energy, and daring, to the same end. Grant that he desires 

the elective franchise, will he not attain it sooner by saving 

30 the already advanced steps toward it than by running 
backward over them? Concede that the new government 
of Louisiana is only to what it should be as the egg is to the 
fowl, we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg 
than by smashing it. 



Addresses and Letters 137 

Again, if we reject Louisiana we also reject one vote in 
favor of the proposed amendment to the national Constitu- 
tion. To meet this proposition, it has been argued that 
no more than three fourths of those States which have not 
attempted secession are necessary to validly ratify the 5 
amendment. I do not commit myself against this further 
than to say that such a ratification would be questionable, 
and sure to be persistently questioned, while a ratification 
by three fourths of all the States would be unquestioned 
and unquestionable. I repeat the question : Can Louisiana 10 
be brought into proper practical relation with the Union 
sooner by sustaining or by discarding her new State gov- 
ernment? What has been said of Louisiana will apply 
generally to other States. And yet so great peculiarities 
pertain to each State, and such important and sudden 15 
changes occur in the same State and withal so new and 
unprecedented is the whole case that no exclusive and in- 
flexible plan can safely be prescribed as to details and col- 
laterals. Such exclusive and inflexible plan would surely 
become a new entanglement. Important principles may 20 
and must be inflexible. In the present situation, as the 
phrase goes, it may be my duty to make some new an- 
nouncement to the people of the South. I am considering, 
and shall not fail to act when satisfied that action will be 
proper. 25 



NOTES AND COMMENT 

(Heavy numerals refer to page; light ones to line) 
MACAULAY'S SPEECHES ON COPYRIGHT 

3, I. Sir: the Speaker of the House of Commons, Charles Shaw 
Lefevre, of Hampton, who held that office from 1839 to 1857. 

3, 7. My honorable and learned friend: Thomas Noon Talfourd 
(1795-1834), a famous dramatist, essayist, lawyer, and judge, known 
as Sergeant Talfourd, the author of the bill Macaulay arose to dis- 
cuss. Macaulay prefixed the following note to this speech in the 
collection of his speeches vs^hich he himself edited in 1853 : 

"On the twenty-ninth of January, 1841, Mr. Sergeant Talfourd 
obtained leave to bring in a bill to amend the law of copyright. The 
object of this bill was to extend the term of copyright in a book to 
sixt}^ years, reckoned from the death of the writer. On the fifth of 
February Mr. Sergeant Talfourd moved that the bill should be read 
a second time. In reply to him the following speech was made. The 
bill was rejected by 45 votes to 38." 

3, 23. Indefeasible. Study the derivation of this word. 

4, 15. Paley: William Paley ( 1743- 1805), a well known theologian 
and philosopher, educated at Cambridge University and raised to a 
high position in the English Church. His Principles of Moral and 
Political Philosophy was probably the book which Macaulay had in 
mind. 

5, 8. Primogeniture, or gavelkind, or borough English. Read 
carefully the passage above, beginning with "the modes of succession 
in the Queen's dominions are twenty," and frame your own definition 
of each of these technical terms. What point is Macaulay trying to 
make? 

5, 9. Jure divino: "by divine law." 

5, 10. Pars rationabilis: "Equally reasonable." 

5, 22. Existing law [of copyright.] See the references on copyright 
in the Descriptive Bibliography. 

7, 9. Maecenas and PoUio: an example of Macaulay's remarkable 
power of illustration. The persons mentioned in this sentence were 
all noted patrons of men of letters. Maecenas and Pollio were the 

139 



140 Notes and Comment 

friends and helpers of Vergil, Horace and other literary Romans of 
the first century B. C. The Medici became prominent in Florence 
in the 14th century and ruled it for several generations. Lorenzo 
(1448-1492) was particularly successful in fostering letters. Lewis 
the Fourteenth, usually spelled Louis: King of France from 1643 to 
1 715. He founded academies of belles-lettres, the sciences, and paint- 
ing and sculpture, and encouraged the work of such great writers and 
artists as Racine, Moliere, Boileau, Lebrun and Claude Lorrain. 
Lord Halifax (1661-1715) and Lord Oxford (1661-1724) each at- 
tained to great influence at the Court of England, the former in the 
reign of WilUam and the latter in the reign of Anne. Who were the 
great writers of their time? 

8, 15. The East India Company was founded by certain London 
merchants in 1600 for the purpose of competing with the Dutch for 
the East India trade. About the middle of the eighteenth century, 
under Clive and Hastings, the company became supreme in India, 
both commercially and politically. Great abuses, which culminated 
in the Indian Mutiny of 1857, led the government to abolish the 
company the following year. 

8, 17. Elizabeth's reign (1558-1603). Find in a good history of 
England an account of the monopolies to which Queen EUzabeth's 
subjects objected. 

8,31. Lord Essex's. Robert Devereux, Second Earl of Essex 
(1567-1604) became a favorite of Queen Elizabeth and was granted 
many special privileges. He lost his influence with her, however, 
and was ultimately executed on a charge of treason. 

9, 28. Australasian continent. What parts of Australia were set- 
tled at the time Macaulay was speaking? 

10, 2. Prince Esterhazy (i 786-1866) was a Hungarian nobleman 
who owned more extensive estates than any other landholder in the 
Austrian Empire. 

10, 8. Dr. Johnson: Samuel Johnson (i 709-1 784), the most in- 
fluential literary man of his time. What books did he write besides 
those mentioned in this paragraph? Are his books much read now? 
Why? 

10, 24. Juvenal (47-138 A. D.) was the greatest of the Roman 
satirists. Johnson imitated Juvenal in Lotidon and The Vanity oj 
Human Wishes. 

10, 25. Our debates. Johnson cleverly made up from the notes of 
paid listeners the speeches which the members of Parliament were 
delivering. 



Notes and Comment 141 

11, I. A man like Dr. Johnson. Macaulay wrote an essay on 
BosweWs Life of Johnson, which was published in the Edinburgh 
Review, and also an account of Johnson's life for the Encydopcedia 
Britannica. What was his opinion of Johnson? 

12, II. Blenheim. When Anne became Queen of England the 
War of the Spanish Succession was in progress, the commander of 
the English and Dutch armies being John Churchill, Earl of Marl- 
borough. In 1702 Marlborough captured a series of important for- 
tresses and was made Duke by the Queen. Two years later he routed 
the French at the village of Blenheim on the Danube, and the Eng- 
lish nation through Parhament bestowed upon him the royal manor 
of Woodstock near Oxford, upon which a magnificent palace was 
erected at public expense. The estate was then renamed Blenheim. 
It is still in possession of Marlborough's descendants, and is visited 
by thousands every year. 

12, II. Strathfieldsaye, about fifty miles southwest of London, 
was the seat of the Duke of Wellington, victor at Waterloo. 

13, 3. Charles the Second's reign began in 1660 and ended in 
1685. 

13, 4. Cowley's " Poems " were during his lifetime (1608-1674) 
more popular than those of Milton. 

13, 5. Pope. Alexander Pope (i 688-1 744) was the leading poet 
in England during the first part of the eighteenth century. His verse 
satires are celebrated, and he attained prominence as a critic. The 
question: "Who now reads Cowley?" will be found in his Imitation 
of the First Epistle of the Second Book of Horace, line 75. 

13, 8. Lord Bolingbroke. Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke 
(1678-1751) was a brilliant English orator and politician. He had 
an easy command of language but lacked depth and sincerity; hence 
what he wrote had no lasting value. The "works " to which Macaulay 
refers were the Philosophical Writings, edited by David Mallet. 

13, II. Paternoster Row, so called because prayer-books were 
sold there, is a short street just north of St. Paul's Cathedral. It is 
still the center of the London book trade. 

13, 12. Hayley's. William Hayley (1745-1820), a now forgotten 
verse writer, had a considerable reputation in his own day. In his 
Essay on Byron Macaulay says: "Poetry had sunk into such decay 
that Mr. Hayley was thought a great poet." Byron ridicules the 
"Triumphs of Temper "in his "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," 
and Southey, one of Hayley's intimate friends, wrote that everything 
was good about him except his poetry. 



142 Notes and Comment 

13, 31. Garrick. David Garrick (i 716-1779) was a pupil and inti- 
mate of Dr. Johnson and became one of the greatest of English actors. 
The benefit for Mrs. EHzabeth Foster, Milton's granddaughter, was 
given April 5, 1750. See Boswell's Johnson. 

14, 14. Tonson. Jacob Tonson (i 707-1 754) was the publisher 
of Dryden's works and issued the first complete octavo edition of 
Shakespeare, as well as the first good edition of Milton's poems. He 
was pubUsher and associate of all the fashionable literary men of his 
day; helped to found and was secretary of the famous Kit Kat Club, 
a society of wits; and may be said to be the father of the publishing 
business in England. 

15, 14. Fielding's Novels. Henry Fielding (i 707-1 754), after a 
successful career as a playwright and manager of a theater, became a 
novelist and wrote The Adventures of Joseph Andrews, 1742, The His- 
tory of Tom Jones, 1749, and Amelia, 1751. These books have always 
been greatly admired, especially for their plot structure and charac- 
terization, and have had enormous influence on English fiction, not- 
ably in the case of Thackeray. 

15, 14. Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman 
Empire appeared in successive volumes from 1776 to 1778. It is 
still the standard authority for the period of which it treats, 100 A. D. 
to 1453 A. D., and is thought by many to be the greatest product of 
historical genius. The author was prejudiced, however, against 
Christianity. 

15, 22. Richardson's Novels were the first English novels of do- 
mestic life. Samuel Richardson (i 689-1 761) was an obscure printer 
who undertook to compile a guide to letter-writing and almost by 
accident produced in 1740 the famous story of Pamela, or Virtue 
Rewarded. This was followed by Clarissa Harlowe and Sir Charles 
Grandison. Richardson quickly became known as the creator of a 
new species of writing and, indeed, deserves to be called the founder 
of the novel, though few now have the courage to read his books on 
account of their length. 

16, I. Mr. Wilberforce. William Wilberforce (i 759-1833) in 
1797 published A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of 
Professed Christians contrasted with Real Christianity. It ran through 
five editions before the end of the year and by 1826 had reached 
the fifteenth edition. Wilberforce was one of the leading op- 
ponents of slavery in Parliament and was an intimate friend of 
Macaulay's father. See Chapter One in Trevelyan's Life of 

•'Macaulay. 



Notes and Comment 143 

16, 13. Mistress Hannah More (i 745-1833) was one of the Johnson 
coterie and became a successful playwright. She became convinced, 
however, that the stage was immoral in its tendencies and turned 
her attention to the writing of moral and religious books. She was 
especially interested in the education of girls, for whom she conducted 
a seminary; and her most popular book, Ccelehs in Search of a Wife 
deals with that subject. Macaulay was often at her house when a 
boy and received from her the money to buy his first books. See 
Trevelyan's Life. 

17, 19. Boswell's Life of Johnson probably is, as Macaulay says 
below, " the finest biographical work in the world." One of its rivals 
is Trevelyan's biography of Macaulay himself. James Boswell (i 740- 
1795) was a Scotchman who came to London in search of adventure 
and made it his business to cultivate the prominent men of the 
town. He succeeded in gaining the good will of Dr. Johnson and 
was closely associated with him for some months. Boswell then 
went abroad and succeeded in meeting Voltaire and others almost 
equally noted. Upon his return he courted the attention of William 
Pitt and also found a wife. At last he conceived the idea of accom- 
panying Dr. Johnson on a tour of the Hebrides. The trip was suc- 
cessfully made and provided the material for Boswell's Journal of a 
Tour through the Hebrides, which he published shortly after Johnson's 
death. He was much with his patron, except in 1780 and 1782, until 
Johnson's last days, and during the following years prepared his 
monumental Life, first published in 1791. Macaulay seems to feel, 
with Boswell's family, that his attendance on the great literary Dic- 
tator was more or less disgraceful. See his Life of Johnson and his 
Essay on Croker's Essay on Boswell's ''Life of Johnson." Others, 
notably Carlyle, have praised Boswell for his capacity of appreciating 
human excellence. 

17, 34. Camden's Britannia was published in 1856. This was a 
description of Great Britain in Latin with the title Britannia sive 
Regnoriint AnglicB, Scotice, et Hibernia, ex intima Antiquitate Choro- 
graphica Descriptios. It was translated into Latin in 1610 and was 
frequently revised and republished, the last edition appearing in 1806. 
The author was WilUam Camden, second master in Westminster 
School, who should be credited as the originator of encyclopaedias. 

18, 14. John Wesley (i 703-1 791) was the founder of Methodism. 
He was educated at the famous Charterhouse School in London and 
at Christ's College, Oxford. There the term "Methodists" was 
applied derisively to a small society, of which Wesley was a member, 



144 Notes and Comment 

because of the well-ordered habits of the members. For some years 
Wesley was a minister in the EstabHshed Church, being for a time 
with Oglethorpe in the colony of Georgia. On May i , 1 738, he formed 
the first Methodist "society" in London, and had the satisfaction of 
seeing the new sect multiply so rapidly that it numbered over 80,000 
members at the time of his death. By the middle of the next cen- 
tury, it had reached nearly half a million. Wesley's influence on the 
English lower classes was most salutary. The Established Church 
had lost its hold upon them and they were sunk in a state of indiffer- 
ence to religion. He was a tremendous worker, traveling on horse- 
back 5,000 miles and preaching 500 sermons each year for nearly fifty 
years. His works, pubhshed in seven volumes, contain besides his 
sermons and theological writings, his Journals, which he began in 
1726 and continued throughout his Hfe. His hymns were published 
with those of his brother Charles in 1738. 

20, 14. Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe (1661-1731), was pub- 
lished in 1 719. 

20, 15. PUgrim^s Progress, by John Bunyan (1628-1688), was 
published in 1678. Why have these two books been so widely popu- 
lar? What have they in common? 

20, 32. Divide the House: call for a vote. Taking a vote in the 
House of Commons is called dividing because those in favor of a 
measure are required to pass out into one lobby and those opposed 
into another. 

21, 3. Be read a second time: equivalent to postpone indefinitely. 
The regular procedure in the House of Commons in the case of bills 
is (i) to hear the measure read and order it printed; (2) set a day for a 
second reading, when the principle of the measure may be discussed. 
If a bill passes second reading it is (3) referred to the Committee of 
the whole House, or a special committee, for consideration of details 
and amendments. When the Committee reports (4) a day is set for 
a third reading, and if the bill passes, it is (5) sent to the House of 
Lords. Should a bill be voted down on second reading, it is lost and 
cannot be revived until another session. Macaulay's motion was 
simply a formal way of killing the bill, as the House would prob- 
ably not be in session six months later. 

Questions and Topics for Study 

I . What was the situation when Macaulay arose to speak? 2 . What 
was his purpose? How do you know? 3. Divide the speech into 



Notes and Comment 14S 

Introduction, Discussion, and Conclusion. Explain what the speaker 
accomplished by means of each of these parts. 4- Suppose you had 
been present and inclined before Macaulay arose to favor the bill, 
what would have been your state of mind at each stage as he pro- 
ceeded? 5. Sum up Macaulay 's argument. What is the strongest 
part of it? 6. Prepare a speech in rebuttal. Where will you go for 
your material? 7. Select the paragraphs which seem to you most 
eloquent and read them aloud. 

22, I. Mr. Greene: Thomas Greene, member for Lancaster, 
Chairman of the Committee of the whole House. 

22, 5. My noble friend: LordMahon (1805-1875), a distinguished 
historian. Macaulay reviewed his History of the War of the Succession 
in Spain in the Edinburgh Review in 1833. Mahon also wrote a 
History of England, which was published in 1854- Though called 
Lord by courtesy, Mahon had not yet succeeded to the title of Earl 
of Stanhope, and hence was a member of the House instead of the 
Lords. He sat in Parliament from 1 83 2 to 1 85 2 . 

25, 3. Madame D'Arblay : Frances Burney (1752-1840), one of the 
earliest of the women novelists of England. Her Evelina appeared in 
1778, Cecilia in 1782, and Camilla and The Wanderer some years 
later. Through her father, a noted musician, she met Johnson, 
Garrick, Burke, and other prominent men and also received an ap- 
pointment as assistant-keeper of the robes to Queen Charlotte. She 
afterward married a French refugee. General D'Arblay and published 
her Memoirs of Dr. Burney and her Diary and Letters, thus providing 
valuable documents for the history of her time. Macaulay's Essay 
on Madame D'Arblay is an excellent biography. 

25, 3. Miss Austen: Jane Austen (i 775-1817), the author of a 
series of novels of English country life. The order of publication, 
though not of writing, was as follows: Sense and Sensibility, 181 1, 
PrUe and Prejudice, 1813, Mansfield Park, 1814, Emma, 1816, North- 
anger Abbey, 1818, Persuasion, 1818. Though only the daughter of a 
village clergyman, Miss Austen observed life so well and portrayed 
it so skilfully that her books have had the warmest admiration of all 
students of fiction. With Macaulay she was a prime favorite. 

26, 5. Shakespeare. Love's Labor's Lost was pubhshed in 1598, 
Pericles, Prince of Tyre, in 1609, Othello in 1622 and Macbeth in 1623. 
Shakespeare died in 16 16. , 

26, 9. Milton. Macaulay refers to a number of authors mentioned 
in the speech of 1841. Compare the use he makes of them on the 



146 Notes and Comment 



1 



two occasions and, if necessary, consult the notes to the earlier 
speech. 

26, 18. Dryden. John Dryden (1632-1700), poet, critic, and 
dramatist, was the greatest man of letters in England for a genera- 
tion. As Macaulay suggests, however, some of his work, particularly 
his comedies, has little merit. Theodore and Honoria, Tancred and 
Sigismunda (Sigismonda and Guiscardo) and Cymon and Iphigenia, 
are verse translations of stories from the Decameron of Boccaccio, an 
Italian writer of the fourteenth century; Palamon and Arcite is a 
version of Chaucer's Knight's Tale; and Alexander's Feast is an ode to 
music. 

26, 22. Flecknoe, Settle: inferior contemporaries, whom Dryden 
satirized, the first in MacFlecknoe and the second as Doeg in Absalom 
and Achitophel. 

26, 29. Production of a boy: Pope claimed to have written his 
Pastorals at sixteen. 

27, 3. Lives of the Poets: Johnson's Lives of the Poets, completed 
in 1 781, contains brief biographies of fifty-two English writers, some 
of which were prepared by others. Some of the "Lives" are excellent 
and the work as a whole is interesting because it reflects the views of 
Johnson and his time. 

27, 15. Burke: Edmund Burke (17 29-1 797), one of the greatest of 
English statesmen, and a great orator and writer. His Vindication 
of Natural Society (1756) was an attempt to show the absurdity of 
Bolingbroke's plan for throwing ridicule upon established religion. 
His Reflections on the French Revolutiofi made him famous throughout 
Europe. The Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791) and 
Thoughts on the Prospect of Peace with a Regicide Directory (1797) 
were supplementary to the Reflections. Burke's point of view was 
conservative, but he had a deep insight into the significance of passing 
events. Among other pieces Burke wrote a treatise on the Sublime 
and the Beautiful, two speeches and a letter on taxation of America, 
and a Letter to a Noble Lord (1796). The latter has been called "the 
most splendid repartee in the English language." 

27, 31. Sophocles (495-405 B. C.) seems to us the greatest of the 
Greek dramatists. He is said to have written more than a hundred 
plays, of which only seven remain. Of these the best known is the 
Antigone. 

28, I. Demosthenes (385-322 B. C.) was the greatest of the 
Greek orators and one of the greatest of the Greek statesmen. His 
father died before he was eight years old, leaving a fortune of some 



Notes and Comment 147 

14,000 dollars, which fell into the hands of unscrupulous guardians. 
As soon as he reached the legal age of eighteen years, Demosthenes 
brought suit to recover the property which had been dissipated, and 
two years later delivered his Speech against the Guardians. He se- 
cured a favorable verdict, though for some reason he failed to receive 
the money. Demosthenes had been at great pains to train himself 
for speech-making and rendered important pubHc service by arousing 
his countrymen against the designs of Philip of Macedon, earning 
for certain of his orations the title of "Philippics." He not only 
spoke but contributed money, and led in organizing a military cam- 
paign. For these public services it was proposed by Ctesiphon in 
336 that Demosthenes be given a crown. A rival, ^schines, said to 
have been in the pay of Philip of Macedon, immediately charged 
Ctesiphon with offering an illegal measure. The case came to trial 
in 330, and Demosthenes' speech On the Crown was such a crushing 
reply to the attack of ^Eschines that the latter voluntarily left the 
country. 

28, 7. Cicero's: Marcus TuUius Cicero (106-43 S- C.) the most 
illustrious of Roman orators and second only to Demosthenes among 
the ancients. He was a famous lawyer and statesman, and held 
many public offices. Politically he was opposed to the usurpation of 
power by Caesar and others, and denounced the conduct of Marc 
Antony in a series of Philippics modeled upon those of Demosthenes. 
Biographies of both Cicero and Demosthenes are included in Plu- 
tarch's Lives. 

28, 10. Racine's: Jean Bap tiste Racine ( 1 639-1 699) is the greatest 
of the French writers of tragedy. His first play, La Thebaide, after- 
ward known as Les Freres Ennemis, was acted at the Palais Royal by 
Moliere's company in 1664. His last and best, Athalie, was written 
for the students of a girls' school at St. Cyr. Hannah More urged 
Macaulay to become a "real Frenchman" so that he might read 
Racine. 

28,11. Moliere's: Jean Baptiste Poquelin (1622-1673), the great- 
est of French actors and writers of comedy and for many years mana- 
ger of a remarkable company of players. His first play, L'Etourdi, 
was produced in 1653 and Tartufe in 1664. 

28, 13. Cervantes: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, the most cele- 
brated Spanish author. Lowell declared his novel, Don Quixote, one 
of the five greatest books ever written. This appeared in two parts, 
the first in 1605 and the second in 1616. Cervantes began his active 
career as a soldier of fortune but afterward became a writer, and pro- 



148 Notes and Comment 

duced a pastoral romance and some twenty plays, only two of which 
are preserved. From 1599 until 1601 he was in prison, and at this 
time, like Bunyan, produced a masterpiece. In later life he wrote a 
number of short novels of adventure. Macaulay thought Don Quixote 
the best novel in the world. 

28,15. Schiller: JohannChristophFriedrich Schiller (1759-1805), 
Germany's greatest playwright. Schiller was also eminent as a poet, 
as a critic, and as a historian. The Robbers was written while the 
author was still a student in a military academy and was first acted 
at Manheim in 1782. It is, of course, inferior to the later plays, 
among which are The Maid of Orleans, William Tell, and Wallenstein. 

28, 17. Goethe: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-183 2) is the 
greatest writer Germany has produced. His influence in determining 
the ideals of modern Germany no one can measure. The Sorrows of 
Werther is a highly romantic novel pubUshed in 1774, while Faust is 
a great poetic drama, which occupied the author's thought for many 
years. Part I was issued in 1806 and Part II in 1830. Goethe and 
Schiller were intimate friends and very greatly stimulated each other. 

29, 16. Mannontel: Jean Francois Marmontel (i 723-1 799) a 
French journalist, author, and critic, who was secretary of the Acad- 
emy of Letters. 

30, 15. The Fairy Queen is an allegorical poem of great length, 
though unfinished, written by Edmund Spenser (i 553-1 599) and 
published at intervals from 1591 to 1596. The design was to show 
forth the character of an ideal knight and the poem may fairly be 
called the epic of Enghsh chivalry. 

30, 16. Bacon's Novum Organum: Francis Bacon (1561-1626); 
became Baron Viscount St. Albans through the favor of James I, 
but lived beyond his means and retired from pubHc life in disgrace. 
As a youth he declared, "I have taken all knowledge to be my prov- 
ince," and his subsequent performance went far to justify the claim. 
He mapped out a great work to be called the Inslaiiratio Magna, of 
which his De Augmentis Scientiarum was the introduction and his 
Novum Organum (New Method) the first chapter. Through these 
Bacon established the inductive or analytic in place of the deductive 
method of reasoning and so laid the foundation of modern scientific 
study. His Essays are short and compact treatments of various 
problems of Ufe in highly suggestive and forceful style. Macaulay's 
Essay on Bacon appeared in the Edinburgh Review in 1837. 

30, 17. Locke's Essay: foundation of the science of psychology. 
John Locke (163 2-1 704), while a student at Oxford, became deeply 



Notes and Comment 149 

interested in the possibilities of the human mind, and after a period 
of twenty years, in which he returned again and again to his task, 
he finished in 1687 his Essay on the Human Understanding. He con- 
tended that all our ideas come to us from experience and thus paved 
the way for the emphasis which is now placed on training children 
and young people by placing them in a favorable environment and 
encouraging them to use their own powers. 

30, 18. Clarendon's History. Edward Hyde, First Earl of Claren- 
don (1608-1674) was Chancellor of the Exchequer under Charles I 
and Prime Minister under Charles II. His History of the Rebellion in 
England deals, therefore, with events with which he was personally 
familiar. He wrote also a History of the Civil War in Ireland. His 
style is stately, but his views were prejudiced and his histories are 
therefore unreliable. 

Questions and Topics for Study 

I. Explain fully the occasion of this second speech. Why was the 
House in Committee? 2. Make an outline of the speech and com- 
pare it with the outline of the first speech. What are the chief dif- 
ferences? 3. Select all the passages which contain information that 
would help the members of the House in deciding how to vote. How 
did Macaulay acquire so much information? 4. Study both speeches 
in order to be able to state Macaulay's idea of the purpose of copy- 
right. 5. Learn, if possible, how the copyright laws of England were 
affected by these speeches. 6. Do you know of other instances where 
a speaker has been able to mold opinion and influence public policy? 
7. Which influences people more, a newspaper or magazine article or 
a speech? Why? 8. What is the best way to learn to speak? How 
did Macaulay learn? Read the biographies of several great orators 
in order to discover how they became powerful speakers. 9. Arrange 
a series of debates on some of the live issues of the day. 



LINCOLN'S ADDRESSES AND LETTERS 

The appreciative understanding of Lincoln's speeches and letters 
requires an intimate acquaintance with Lincoln's life and with the 
history of the times in which he lived. Around no other American 
except Washington clusters so much of first rate importance to all 
citizens. Hence the student should take this occasion to trace step 
by step the career of Lincoln and to connect his activities with those 
events which shaped the nation and brought it into and through a 
great civil war. Ample references for this purpose will be found in 
the Descriptive Bibliography appended to the Introduction to this 
volume. Every member of the class should read one good life of 
Lincoln through. 

REPLY TO DOUGLAS AT PEORIA, OCTOBER i6, 1854 

This speech marks the beginning of the great contest over slavery 
between Lincoln and Douglas which ended with Lincoln's election 
to the presidency of the United States. It was first delivered at 
Springfield, 111., on October 4 at the State Fair, in answer to a long 
address which Douglas had made the day before with the purpose of 
justifying his recent course in Congress in regard to slavery. After 
the meeting at Peoria, Lincoln's speech was written out and published 

To grasp the significance of this speech it is necessary to recall the 
history of the slavery agitation and Douglas's part in it. At the 
time of the adoption of the Constitution, slavery existed in several 
states, but the framers of the document refrained from making any 
direct reference to it. The Northwest Territory, however, was made 
free by the Ordinance of 1787. From the beginning the slave-holding 
states were eager to control the Congress. To do so slave territory 
must be extended as new states were admitted; hence the main 
political issue in the country came to be slavery, and feeling concern- 
ing it often ran high. The first crisis was reached in 1898, when 
Missouri petitioned for admission to the Union. After violent agita- 
tion in Congress, a compromise measure proposed by Henry Clay 
was adopted in 1820. This forever prohibited slavery in the Louisiana 
Purchase north of 36® 30' north latitude, except in Missouri. After 

ISO 



Notes and Comment 15^ 

from mnois, who had become a 'eader among the Democra. New 
I^rwTatuLrast't'^^^^^^^^^^ 

""l^^t^^t^ famous compromise of .850 wouM - 
the question of slavery. Statesmen on both sides, mcludmg Stephen 

as on other local affairs, ihe jNeorasKd. Northern 

forward to answer Douglas's speech. He did so ^^^^ ^ ^ ^^^^^ 

Douglas felt called -^^-}^jf^,^^:^^^^ Douglas 

Lincoln would give an ^^dress at Peom twelve y ^^^ 



152 Notes and Comment 

began with a resume of the efforts of the North to apply the Declara- 
tion of Independence to all new territory which it acquired and fail- 
ing in that to provide for peace by a series of compromises reserving 
as much territory for freedom as possible. He showed that the 
Kansas-Nebraska Bill was a direct violation of one of these com- 
promises and declared that it was wrong. Declared indifference but 
really covert zeal for slavery he said he hated. He had, however, no 
prejudice against the Southern people; they were doing only what 
others would do in their situation. Then he took up the argu- 
ments for the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and answered 
them one by one. The chief one was "the sacred right of self- 
government." 

35, 7. " Fools rush in where angels fear to tread ": a line from 
the Essay on Criticism by Alexander Pope (1688-1744). What 
references to literature are to be found in Lincoln's speeches? With 
what poets was he familiar? 

35, 19. Oyster laws of Virginia. What is the value of this illustra- 
tion? Make a collection of Lincoln's illustrations and decide what 
effect they would have on the people to whom he was speaking. 

36, 30. Pro tanto: a Latin phrase meaning "by so much." Had 
Lincoln studied Latin? 

37, 14. Opinions and examples of our Revolutionary fathers. 
The speech at Cooper Institute was developed out of this idea. How 
did Lincoln acquire his knowledge of United States history? 

37, 34. The Ordinance of '87. This provided for the government 
of the Northwest Territory, which included what is now the states 
of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and part of Min- 
nesota. It was passed in the closing days of the Congress of the Con- 
federation and provided for the organization of five states in which 
slavery should forever be unlawful. 

39, 22. Places for poor white people to remove from. Why did 
Lincoln's father leave Kentucky? For graphic pictures of the poor 
whites in the South read the novels of Miss Murfree and of John 
Fox, Jr. 

40, 6. Five slaves are coimted as being equal to three whites: 
one of the compromises of the Constitution, repealed by the Four- 
teenth Amendment. What similar difficulties over representation 
have arisen in our own time? 

42, 3. Behemoth of danger. See Job xl, 15. 
42, 16. It hath no relish of salvation in it. Shakespeare's Hamlet, 
Act III, Scene iii, line 92. Does Lincoln quote accurately? 



Notes and Comment 153 



Questions and Topics for Study 

I, Make an outline of Lincoln's argument against popular sov- 
ereignty. 2. Find, if possible, the arguments of Douglas which 
Lincoln is attacking. Or prepare to make a "supposed speech of 
Senator Douglas in favor of the Nebraska Bill." 3. What was the 
motive of Senator Douglas for introducing the Nebraska Bill? What 
was the effect upon his fortunes? 4. Read Lincoln's speech aloud, 
noticing how your mood changes. How did Lincoln appeal to the 
feelings oi his hesLTers? 5. Recite the closing paragraph from memory. 
What book gave Lincoln his style? 

SPEECH BEFORE THE REPUBLICAN STATE CONVENTION 
AT SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, JUNE 17, 1858 

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention. This con- 
vention nominated Mr. Lincoln for United States senator. He had 
been a Whig candidate for senator in the Legislature of 1855, 
but lacked a few votes of election and withdrew in favor of Lyman 
Trumbull, a Democrat, who was known to be opposed to the policies 
of Stephen A. Douglas. Trumbull became one of Lincoln's strongest 
supporters. The opponents of slavery joined in a new party in Illi- 
nois in 1856 and began to call themselves Republicans. They held 
a convention at Decatur May 29 and called upon Lincoln, who was 
present as a visitor, to speak. He came forward and addressed the 
convention so eloquently that all the reporters present forgot to take 
notes, and from that time he was the acknowledged leader of the 
party. His ''lost speech" was written out years later from notes by 
H. C. Whitney, a young lawyer with whom Lincoln had been travel- 
ing, and was published in "McClure's Magazine" for September, 
1896. 

44, 4. Since a policy was initiated: the repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise. 

44, 10. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." Where 
did Lincoln get this expression? The passage beginning with these 
words is one of the most memorable uttered by an American. (With 
what others would you compare it?) Lincoln understood its full 
significance and retained it in his speech contrary to the advice of 
almost all of his friends. (See Herndon and Weik, Abraham Lincoln, 
Vol. II, pp. 66-69.) It quickly made the rounds of the public press, 
and brought Lincoln into prominence outside of his own state. The 



154 Notes and Comment 

speech as a whole was prepared with the utmost care and had as 
much or more influence than the Cooper Institute speech in making 
him President. 

44, 25. Dred Scott Decision. Lincoln's own explanation of this 
and of its significance will be found a few lines below. For the details 
consult Hart's or some other good American history. 

46, 21. As to amount to just this. Note Lincoln's power of plain 
statement. This was one of the chief sources of his success as a 
speaker. 

46, I. Down they voted the amendment: offered by Salmon P. 
Chase, of Ohio, whom Lincoln afterward appointed Secretary of the 
Treasury and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. 

46, 16. Senator Trumbull: in the Senate because Lincoln was 
more devoted to principle than to party. See the note to line i, 

p. 44. 

46, 27. The outgoing President, in his last annual message: 
Franklin Pierce. James G. Blaine says: "The purpose and scope of 
the [Dred Scott] decision was undoubtedly known to President Pierce 
before the end of his term, and President Buchanan imprudently 
announced in his inaugural address that the point of time when the 
people of a territory can decide for themselves will be speedily and 
finally settled by the Supreme Court." {Twenty Years in Congress, 
Vol. I, p. 132.) 

47, 4. Indorsing the Dred Scott decision. Douglas spoke at 
Springfield, June 12, 1857 and was answered by Lincoln at the same 
place June 26. (See Nicolay and Hay, 11, pp. 85-89.) 

47, 7. The Silliman letter: written by Professor Silliman, of Yale, 
for a group of Connecticut citizens to inquire about certain phases 
of the slavery question in Kansas. In his reply President Buchanan 
took the position that according to the Dred Scott decision slavery 
legally existed in the territory. 

47, 12. The Lecompton constitution. After the passage of the 
Kansas-Nebraska Bill in 1854 it was expected that Nebraska would 
come in as a free state hut Kansas was doubtful. Hence members of 
both factions rushed into the territory in order to control it. Both 
sides were armed and bloody conflicts ensued. By intimidation and 
force a proslavery legislature was elected, which passed a law making 
it a crime even to assert that persons had not the right to hold slaves. 
The antislavery party called a rival legislature together at Topeka, 
and such fierce riots occurred that President Pierce ordered the 
JJnited States troops to disperse it. In 1857 a convention met at 



Notes and Comment 155 

Lecompton to frame a state constitution. The free- state men refused 
to participate in the convention or in the election which followed. 
Nevertheless, the Buchanan administration attempted to secure the 
admission of Kansas as a state under the Lecompton constitution. 
Douglas opposed this and defeated the measure, thereby gaining the 
approval of the North but so far offending the South that his election 
to the Presidency became impossible. 

50, I. Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James: Douglas, Pierce, 
Taney, and Buchanan. Lincoln believed that there was such a pre- 
concert, and repeated the charge many times in the debates with 
Douglas. There is, however, no proof of the charge which seems 
sufficient to substantiate it. 

50, 33. McLean or Curtis: two judges of the Supreme Court who 
refused to concur in the Dred Scott decision. 

62, 6. The aptest instrument. Horace Greeley, editor of the 
New York Tribune, was one of the most influential of those who sug- 
gested the choice of Douglas as national anti-slavery leader because 
of his stand on the Kansas question. Find out who Greeley was and 
whether his judgment on political matters was usually sound. 

52, 12. f* A living dog is better than a dead lion ": see Ecdesias- 
tes, ix, 4. 

Questions and Topics for Study 

I . What effect did Lincoln seek to produce by means of this speech? 
If you had sat in the convention what would you have resolved to do? 
Why? 2. Sum up the whole speech in one sentence. 3. Show how 
Lincoln leads his hearers step by step to the point where they must 
admit that a struggle is inevitable unless the whole country consents 
to become slave territory. 4. Why does Lincoln close by paying 
his respects to Douglas and his party in comparison with the Re- 
publicans? 

REPLY TO DOUGLAS AT ALTON, ILLINOIS, OCTO- 
BER 15, 1858 

About a month after the Springfield convention at which Lincoln 
was nominated for United States senator, his Democratic opponent, 
Stephen A. Douglas, returned to his home in Chicago and at a great 
reception in his honor took occasion to reply to Lincoln's convention 
speech. Lincoln was present at the reception and was called upon 
to reply. He did so the following evening. A few days later, on the 
advice of the Republican managers, Lincoln challenged Douglas to 



156 



Notes and Comment 



a series of debates on the issues raised in these speeches. Douglas 
reluctantly accepted and there ensued a series of forensic contests 
more remarkable than ever witnessed before or since. Douglas was 
shrewd and resourceful; Lincoln, plain and earnest. Douglas secured 
the senatorship though not a majority of the popular vote, but Lincoln 
won the far greater prize of the Presidency, because he held firmly 
to the fundamental principle that slavery was wrong and must some 
day become extinct. 

Seven debates were held so as to cover all parts of Illinois, and 
immense crowds attended. The speeches were very fully reported 
in the papers at the time and were later printed as campaign docu- 
ments. The text is the summary of his arguments which was made 
by Lincoln at the closing debate at Alton. For accounts of the whole 
series see Herndon and Weik, Morse, or Tarbell, as well as editions 
of the debates by Sparks and others. A good estimate of Douglas 
will be found in Blaine's Twenty Years in Congress. 

ADDRESS AT COOPER UNION, FEBRUARY 27, i860 

Though Lincoln had served one term in Congress and had made a 
few speeches in New England, he remained, up to the time of the 
debates with Douglas, practically unknown to the East. The de- 
bates were widely published in the papers and attracted much atten- 
tion. "Who is this Abe Lincoln," people were asking, "that can so 
embarrass in argument the foremost political leader of the day?" 
Hence it came about that the Young Men's Republican Union of 
New York City invited Mr. Lincoln to make an address under its 
auspices. Lincoln was eager for such an opportunity and accepted, 
stipulating that he should be allowed to choose a political subject 
if he wished. 

Realizing the importance of the occasion, Lincoln prepared himself 
with the greatest care. Even after his arrival in New York, when he 
learned that so imposing an audience room as Cooper Institute had 
been chosen, he continued to work on his speech. 

The result was a masterpiece. Although his hearers numbered 
among them the most intelligent and refined persons of the time, all 
were delighted. He was introduced by William Cullen Bryant and 
seemed at first awkward and ill at ease, but as he launched into his 
theme his face kindled and his whole being grew eloquent. He held 
his audience in rapt attention for more than an hour and at once 
took rank as one of the greatest orators. 



Notes and Comment 157 

The address was published in full in the papers and was in sub- 
stance repeated in several places in New England. Everywhere the 
effect was the same. The people felt that Lincoln was a sincere man 
who had the truth and knew how to express it. Doubtless it is too 
much to say that this speech made Lincoln president, but it certainly 
contributed very much to that end, and it had very great influence 
in shaping the course of thousands of the people of the North as well 
as of Lincoln himself in the five years that followed its delivery. (See 
Choate's Career and Character of Abraham Lincoln, pp. i6 and 17. 
For a different view see Mr. Field's report in Ward's Abraham Lin- 
coln, pp. 207-209.) 

60, 7. Speech last autumn at Columbus. Lincoln followed Doug- 
las and answered him. See Lincoln's Columbus Speech. See also 
the paragraph with reference to the "Revolutionary fathers" in the 
Peoria speech. 

60, 26. The " thirty-nine." Refer to one of the larger histories of 
the United States for an account of the constitutional convention. 
Fiske's Critical Period of American History is a good authority. 

61, 10. It is this. If possible examine the Columbus speech of 
Senator Douglas in order to determine whether Mr. Lincoln states 
Douglas's position fairly or not. 

61, 21. In 1784. In that year an ordinance prohibiting slavery 
in the territory of the nation north of parallel 31° after 1800 was 
introduced by Thomas Jefferson but it failed of passage. 

62, 15. The Ordinance of *87: the ordinance for the government 
of the Northwest Territory. This forbade slavery or involuntary 
servitude except for crime. 

62, 28. Without ayes and nays: without a roll call, which is sure 
to be demanded if there is opposition to a measure in Congress. 

63, 17. North Carolina ceded to the Federal Government. Con- 
sult a map of the period in order to learn what territory was 
claimed by the original colonies. 

64, 8. The Louisiana coimtry: purchased from France in Jeffer- 
son's administration. All the land drained by the western tribu- 
taries of the Mississippi was included. The population was 40,000. 

65, 6. The Missouri question: the Missouri Compromise. 

66, 9. Charles Pinckney (i 746-1825) helped to frame the Ordi- 
nance of 1787 and opposed all amendments to it. 

65, 20. The only acts ... I have been able to discover. 
Mr. Nott and Mr. Brainerd, two of the members of the executive 
committee of the Young Men's Repubhcan Union, prepared for pub- 



158 Notes and Comment 

lication an annotated edition of Lincoln's speech. They say of it 
in their preface, "No one who has not actually attempted to verify 
its details can understand the patient research and historical labor 
which it involved." 

66, I. Corporal oaths : oaths ratified by touching a sacred object 
or "corpus." The Bible is sometimes used in this way. 

67, 3. Much reason to believe. What precisely did Mr. Lincoln 
have in mind? 

68, 13. The Dred Scott case. See the note to page 44, 
line 25. 

71, 28. Black Republicans: a term of reproach intended to sug- 
gest that Lincoln and his party were radical abohtionists. Douglas 
made this charge again and again in the debates. What was Lin- 
coln's real position? 

72, 15. Shall get votes in your section. The RepubUcan vote 
in the slave states in i860 was as follows: Missouri 17,028, Kentucky 
1364, Virginia 1929, Maryland 2294, Delaware 3815. 

74, 32. John Brown (1800-1850) was a New Englander who went 
to Kansas at the time of the slavery agitation in 1855 and there be- 
came one of the most aggressive of the free-state men, winning the 
title of Ossawatomie Brown by a successful attack on a party from 
Missouri in 1856. Three years later he went to Harper's Ferry, 
Virginia, and seized the United States arsenal, hoping for an uprising 
of the negroes. This, however, did not occur, and Brown's party was 
overcome by troops under Robert E. Lee. Several of Brown's fol- 
lowers, including two of his sons, were killed in the fight, and Brown 
himself was tried, convicted, and hanged. This unfortunate affair 
did much to increase the bitterness of sectional feeUng; each side 
accused the other of being responsible for it. 

76, 7. The Southampton insurrection: called also Nat Turner's 
insurrection. It occurred in Southampton County, Virginia in 1831, 
was led by a negro called Nat Turner, and resulted in the massacre 
of more than sixty white persons, mostly women and children. The 
abohtionists were charged with having incited the uprising. 

76, 12. I do not think a general . . . slave insurrection is 
possible. This opinion was justified by the conduct of the slaves 
during the Civil War. 

76, 25. The slave revolution in Hayti: an echo of the French 
Revolution. It occurred in 1791 and was led by Toussaint L'Ouver- 
ture, a full-blooded negro. The object was to throw off the rule of 
the French and Spanish aristocracy and this was attained. Wendell 



Notes and Comment 159 

Phillips took the hero for the subject of one of his most eloquent 
lectures. 

76, 27. The Gunpowder Plot: an attempt in 1604 on the part of 
some members of the Catholic party to prevent oppressive measures 
against them by blowing up the Parliament House while the king was 
giving the address from the throne. The plot was disclosed by a 
friend of one of the members, and the conspirators were caught and 
punished. 

77, 10. Pari passu: "with equal progress." Lincoln was long 
an advocate of the purchase and deportation of the slaves. For the 
activities of Jefferson in connection with the aboUtion of slavery see 
Fiske's Critical Period. 

77, 31. Orsini's attempt on Louis Napoleon. This was in 1858. 
The leader, Felice Orsini, made his headquarters in London. He was 
tried and acquitted by an English jury and the French thought the 
English negligent in the matter. Orsini was afterward executed in 
Paris. 

78, 4. Helper's book. In 1857 H. R. Helper, a poor white of North 
Carolina, published a book called The Impending Crisis of the South, 
in which he pointed out that the social and economic condition of the 
poor white men of the South would be much improved by the aboli- 
tion of slavery. The slave holders were greatly incensed by the book, 
while the Republicans circulated thousands of copies of it as a cam- 
paign document. What other book figured prominently in the anti- 
slavery agitation? 

78, 29. As property. The Republicans held that the Consti- 
tution regarded slaves as persons bound to labor, not mere property. 

79, 6. The Supreme Court has decided: in the famous Dred Scott 
case. Note Lincoln's analysis. 

82, 10. Senator Douglas's new sedition law. Douglas intro- 
duced a resolution in the Senate instructing the Committee on the 
Judiciary to report a bill for the protection of each state and terri- 
tory against conspiracies or combinations made in other states with 
the intent to molest government, inhabitants, property, or institu- 
tions. What seems to have been the object of the resolution? Why 
would Senator Douglas introduce it? 

83, 33. Policy of " don't care." Senator Douglas declared pub- 
licly that he did not care whether slavery "was voted up or voted 
down." 

84,5. What Washington said . . . did. Washington hoped that 
some day the nation would be a confederacy of free states. As Presi- 



i6o Notes and Comment 

dent he signed the Ordinance of '87, which prohibited slavery in the 
Northwest Territory. 

Questions and Topics for Study 

I. What use does Lincoln make of his "text"? 2. Make an out- 
line of the main divisions of the speech. Can the whole be summed 
up in one sentence? 3. What classes of people did Lincoln hope to 
reach and influence? What did he want them to do? 4. The speech 
is said to have been very convincing. Explain what made it so. 
5. Show how Lincoln turned the enemy's own guns upon them. 

LINCOLN'S FAREWELL ADDRESS AT SPRINGFIELD 

After Mr. Lincoln's election to the Presidency he remained quietly 
at his home in Springfield, receiving visits from time to time from 
prominent men and making up his mind about who should be in his 
cabinet. Meanwhile some of the Southern States seceded, and war 
clouds began to threaten. When the time of departure arrived, a 
large company of Lincoln's townsmen gathered at the station to say 
farewell. All shook his hand and then as the train was about to start 
Mr. Lincoln took his place on the platform, removed his hat, though 
the rain was falling, and delivered a short but touching and dignified 
address. 

What light does this address throw upon the character of Lincoln 
and upon his remarkable popularity? 



ADDRESSES DELIVERED ON THE JOURNEY TO 
WASHINGTON 

The presidential party traveled to Washington by way of the prin- 
cipal cities of the North, and on several occasions Mr. Lincoln made 
brief speeches. In these he sought to impress his hearers with the 
gravity of the situation and with the fact that the responsibility for 
the future rested upon the body of citizens, but he studiously avoided 
making a statement of the policy of the government. In this he dis- 
played his profound insight and political wisdom. The most im- 
pressive of the speeches was doubtless that delivered at Independence 
Hall in Philadelphia. Note the closing words, which seem like a 
premonition. 



Notes and Comment i6l 



Questions and Topics for Study 

I. How was Lincoln received by the people on his journey? 2. 
What had happened since Lincoln's election to increase the gravity 
of the situation he must face? 3. Why was it wise for him to avoid 
stating the policy of the government until inauguration day? 4. What 
evidence is there that a plot was laid to kill Lincoln before he could 
reach Washington? 

FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 

Lincoln's first inaugural address is one of the most important of 
American state papers and it is also one of the finest. It was prepared 
with the greatest care before Mr. Lincoln left Springfield to go to 
Washington, but the process of revision and polishing continued until 
the very day of delivery. An interesting account of the inauguration 
ceremonies will be found in Schouler's History of the United States, 
Vol. V, p. 5. 

92, 2. A custom as old as the government. The speech opens with 
this reference to established custom. What was the purpose of such 
an opening? 

92, 10. Apprehension seems to exist. At the very time these 
words were uttered, representatives from a number of the Southern 
States were organizing the Confederate Government at Montgomery, 
Alabama. 

92, 21. I have no lawful right to do so. How then could he 
issue the Emancipation Proclamation? 

93, 18. There is much controversy. The radical wing of the 
Republican Party was opposed to the Fugitive Slave Law and criti- 
cised Lincoln for his attitude toward it. How did those who aided 
slaves to get away justify their acts? Look in the American History 
for an account of the "Underground Railway." 

94, 20. I take the official oath: administered to Mr. Lincoln by 
Chief Justice Taney, he who handed down the Dred Scott decision, 
while Stephen A. Douglas held Mr. Lincoln's hat. Read the oath, 
which you will find in section i of article 2 of the Constitution of the 
United States. 

94, 31. Fifteen different and greatly distinguished citizens. 
Name these in order. What were some of the ** perils" through which 
they conducted the government? 



i62 Notes and Comment 

96, 3. A disruption . . . heretofore menaced. What were the 
Nullification Acts? What was the attitude of New England in the 
Hartford Convention of 1 814? 

95, 6. The Union of these States is perpetual: the first explicit 
statement of the doctrine. The right of secession was not seriously 
questioned before i860. This is why Lincoln may be said to be al- 
most as much the "Father of his Country" as Washington himself. 

96, 23. The Union is much older than the Constitution. Trace 
the history of the Union by looking up the following: (i) New England 
Confederation of 1643. (2) The plan of union proposed by William 
Penn. (3) Franklin's Plan of Union, presented to the colonial con- 
gress at Albany in 1754. (4) The Stamp Act Congress of 1765. 
(5) The Continental Congresses of 1774 and 1775. (6) The Articles 
of Confederation, adopted in 1778. 

96, 10. The Union is unbroken. Lincoln held steadily to this view, 
and at the close of the war undertook the task of reconstruction with 
this as a presupposition. 

97, 24. The ills you fly from. The speaker doubtless had in mind 
the lines in Hamlet, Act III, Scene i. 

"Makes us rather bear those ills we have 
Than fly to others that we know of." 

98, 21. Majorities and minorities. Note carefully Lincoln's state- 
ment of the principle upon which democratic government rests. 

101, 1 2. Either of the modes prescribed. What are these modes? 

101, 22. A proposed amendment. This grew out of various at- 
tempts to find a solution of the national difi&culties in the closing 
weeks of the Buchanan administration. The amendment provided 
that Congress should never be given power to interfere with the 
domestic institutions of the states. It was passed and signed by the 
President, but since it added nothing to the Constitution was simply 
dropped out of sight. 

102, 2. His duty is to administer the present government. 
Amid the babel of conflicting views this simple program of Mr. 
Lincoln gradually approved itself as being both good policy and good 
sense. 

103, 10. I am loath to close. When Mr. Lincoln showed his in- 
augural address to Mr. Seward, the latter said that he approved it 
but that he would add "some words of affection, some of calm and 
cheerful confidence." He wrote out for Mr. Lincoln a paragraph to 
show what he had in mind. Lincoln accepted this in substance but 



Notes and Comment 163 

modified the form. Compare the closing words of the address with 
Seward's, which follows. 

"I close, we are not, we must not be, aliens or enemies, but fellow- 
countrymen and brethren. Although passion has strained our bonds 
of affection too hardly, they must not, I am sure they will not, be 
broken. The mystic chords which, proceeding from so many battle- 
fields and so many patriot graves, pass through all hearts and all 
hearths in this broad continent of ours, will yet again harmonize in 
their ancient music when breathed upon by the guardian angel of 
the nation." 

Questions and Topics for Study 

I. Find and read a description of the scene while the address was 
being delivered. 2. What was Mr. Lincoln's chief purpose? 3. Sum 
up in a few words his chief argument. 4. What classes of people 
would be dissatisfied with the address? Why? 5. Find and read 
those articles in the Constitution which bear most directly upon the 
situation which Mr. Lincoln had to face. 



LETTER TO WILLIAM H. SEWARD 

Before the National Convention of the Republican Party in Chi- 
cago in i860 it was generally assumed that William H. Seward, of 
New York, would be the nominee for President. After the election, 
therefore, Mr. Lincoln promptly offered him the position of Secretary 
of State and to this office Mr. Seward was appointed. But like most 
men in the East Mr. Seward had too low an estimate of the new 
President's ability. Seward was, moreover, impulsive and full of 
confidence in himself. Hence in a few days after the inauguration he 
sent the following: 

^^ Thoughts for the President's Consideration: 

" First. We are at the end of a month's administration, and yet 
without a policy either domestic or foreign. 

" Second. This, however, is not culpable, and it has even been un- 
avoidable. The presence of the Senate, with the need to meet ap- 
plications for patronage, have prevented attention to other and more 
grave matters. 

" Third. But further delay to adopt and prosecute our policies for 
both domestic and foreign affairs would not only bring scandal on 
the administration, but danger upon the country. 



164 Notes and Comment 



" Fourth. To do this we must dismiss the applicants for office. 
But how? I suggest that we make the local appointments forth- 
with, leaving foreign or general ones for ulterior and occasional 
action. 

" Fifth. The policy at home. I am aware that my views are sin- 
gular, and perhaps not sufficiently explained. My system is built 
upon this idea as a ruling one, namely, that we must 

" Change the Question before the Public froj^ one upon 
Slavery, or about Slavery, for a question upon Union or Dis- 
union: 

" In other words, from what would be regarded as a party question 
to one of patriotism or union. 

"The occupation or evacuation of Fort Sumter, although not in 
fact a slavery or a party question, is so regarded. Witness the temper 
manifested by the Republicans in the free States, and even by the 
Union men in the South. 

" I would therefore terminate it as a safe means for changing the 
issue. I deem it fortunate that the last administration created the 
necessity. 

" For the rest, I would simultaneously defend and reinforce all the 
ports in the gulf, and have the navy recalled from foreign stations to 
be prepared for a blockade. Put the island of Key West under 
martial law. 

" This will raise distinctly the question of union or disunion. I 
would maintain every fort and possession in the South. 
" For Foreign Nations 

" I would demand explanations from Spain and France, categori- 
cally, at once. 

" I would seek explanations from Great Britain and Russia, and 
send agents into Canada, Mexico, and Central America to rouse a vig- 
orous continental spirit of independence on this continent against 
European intervention. 

" And, if satisfactory explanations are not received from Spain and 
France, 

" Would convene Congress and declare war against them. 

" But whatever policy we adopt, there must be an energetic prose- 
cution of it. 

" For this purpose it must be somebody's business to pursue and 
direct it incessantly. 

" Either the President must do it himself, and be all the while ac- 
tive in it, or 



Notes and Comment 165 

" Devolve it on some other member of his cabinet. Once adopted, 
debates on it must end, and all agree and abide. 
'* It is not in my especial province; 
" But I neither seek to evade nor assume responsibility." 

Mr. Lincoln replied immediately. What do the letters show as to 
the characters of the two men? What as to their judgment concern- 
ing public affairs in the crisis then pending? 



LETTER TO GENERAL McCLELLAN 

Lincoln's greatest difficulty was to find generals who could handle 
large bodies of troops. This was especially the case with the armies 
operating near Washington, George B. McClellan had won a few 
victories in minor engagements in West Virginia and was called to 
Washington and placed in command of the Army of the Potomac. 
He proved a good organizer but a poor fighter, and Lincoln was 
obliged to meet severe criticism because of McClellan's inaction. In 
fairness to McClellan it should be said that he developed a good army 
and hence deserves somewhat of the credit for the later victories of 
Meade and Grant. Note the clearness with which Lincoln states his 
view of the situation. 



LETTER TO HORACE GREELEY 

Horace Greeley is one of the most interesting figures in the history 
of American journalism. As editor of the New York Tribune he 
wielded tremendous influence throughout the North. He was an 
active politician and in the campaign of i860 supported Mr. Bates 
as against Seward and thus helped to make Lincoln's nomination 
possible. After Mr. Lincoln became President, Greeley greatly em- 
barrassed the administration by his criticisms, especially with regard 
to the blunders of Lincoln's generals. With other radicals, although 
he had favored letting the seceding states go unopposed, he demanded 
immediate emancipation of the slaves and published an editorial 
entitled "The Prayer of Twenty Millions." Mr. Lincoln had before 
this prepared a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation but on the 
advice of Seward was waiting for a Union victory before issuing it. 
He was glad, therefore, to have the opportunity to make his views 
known by replying to Greeley's open letter. 



1 66 Notes and Comment 



LETTER TO GENERAL JOSEPH HOOKER 

As this letter shows, the progress of the Northern armies was hin- 
dered by lack of harmony among the commanding officers. General 
Hooker had criticised instead of helping both McClellan and Bumside. 

REPLY TO A COMMITTEE FROM CHICAGO 

As explained above, Mr. Lincoln had already prepared the proc- 
lamation emancipating the slaves and was only waiting a favorable 
moment for issuing it. This came with the battle of Antietam. Note 
how clearly Lincoln can see both sides of a question. 

THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION 

A provisional proclamation was made on September 22, 1862, 
announcing that on January i, 1863 the President would declare all 
slaves "within any State or any designated part of a state, the people 
whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States," thence- 
forward and forever free. What amendment to the Constitution 
followed? What is the present condition of the negroes in the South? 

REPLY TO THE WORKINGMEN OF MANCHESTER 

One of the most interesting phases of the history of the Civil War 
is the attitude assumed by the English. The sympathy of the ruHng 
classes was generally with the South, but the common people favored 
the North. Thus the working people of Manchester, though severely 
injured by the blockade, which cut off the supply for the mills, sent 
Mr. Lincoln an address commending his policy. 

REPLY TO J. C. CONKLING 

The lack of harmony and support in the North against which 
Mr. Lincoln had to contend is indicated by the fact that in June, 
1863, a meeting was held in Springfield, Illinois, to censure the gov- 
ernment and to take steps to form a Northwestern Confederacy. 
Lincoln's friends decided to hold a meeting to counteract this and 
invited Mr. Lincoln to attend and speak. The principal questions 
at issue are treated in his reply to J. C. Conkling, chairman of the 
committee of arrangements. Find and state these issues. 



Notes and Comment 167 



ADDRESS AT GETTYSBURG 

The battle of Gettysburg was the turning point of the Civil War. 
Lee had decided to invade the North, and if he had known the actual 
conditions might have marched upon Washington itself. Lincoln 
was obliged to choose a new general on the eve of a great conflict. 
Nevertheless, the victory went to the Union arms. 

It was natural that the feeling of gratitude should be profound, 
and almost immediately after the battle steps were taken to set 
apart a portion of the field as a national cemetery. The dedication 
was appointed for the nineteenth of November, 1863, and Edward 
Everett, counted the greatest living American orator, was chosen to 
deliver the principal address. Mr. Lincoln was invited as chief magis- 
trate of the nation to set apart the grounds for their sacred use by a 
few appropriate remarks. 

The time was short and affairs pressing, and Mr. Lincoln did not 
find time to finish the writing of his address until on his way and even 
after he had arrived at his hotel on the day of delivery. Coming at 
the close of a long and highly polished oration, the few and simply 
uttered words of the President failed to produce much effect, and 
there was a general feeling of disappointment. Mr. Everett, however, 
was deeply impressed, and told Mr. Lincoln that his few words had 
come nearer to the heart of the occasion than all of the long speech 
which had preceded. 

This was very true. When the short address was read in the papers 
the next day, it was seen to be a masterpiece, and it is now generally 
regarded as the finest single utterance of any American. It should be 
learned by heart and spoken slowly while the full meaning that is 
suggested is brought vividly to mind. 

LETTER TO GENERAL U. S. GRANT 

Ulysses S. Grant was a graduate of West Point and a veteran of 
the Mexican War. At the beginning of the Rebellion he was an un- 
successful storekeeper and had difficulty in securing a commission in 
the army. He rose rapidly, however, and by brilliant victories at 
Fort Donelson, at Vicksburg, and at Chattanooga, overcame the 
obstacles which jealousy had placed in his path and became easily 
foremost among the Northern generals. Lincoln felt that he had 
found at last a man who could be trusted. Compare the letters to 
McClellan and Hooker. 



i68 Notes and Comment 



LETTER TO MRS. BIXBY 

Lincoln's kindness of heart is proverbial. He could not bear to see 
even the humblest creature suffer. The pathetic appeals which were 
made to him by relatives of soldiers who had got into trouble led to so 
many pardons that his subordinates sometimes despaired of main- 
taining discipline in the army. The letter to Mrs. Bixby is regarded 
as the finest of his many expressions of sympathy. It was written 
soon after Lincoln's second election. 

THE SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS 

The nomination of Mr. Lincoln for a second term was opposed by 
both the radicals and the peace party, but in the convention he re- 
ceived almost the entire vote on the first ballot. Before election, 
notable victories by Farragut at Mobile and Sherman at Atlanta 
had awakened new hope and aroused confidence in the conduct of the 
war and as a result Lincoln defeated McClellan, the Democratic 
candidate, by an overwhelming vote. Grant was pounding away 
at Petersburg and Richmond and the fall of the Confederacy was 
plainly in sight. Under these circumstances Mr. Lincoln's second 
inaugural address took on the character of an interpretation of the 
harrowing experience through which the nation had been passing and 
an appeal for the binding up of all wounds, of flesh and spirit alike. 
His constant companionship with the Bible is evident in the closing 
paragraphs. 

130, 1 6. Let us judge not. See Matthew, vii, i. 

130, 19. Woe . . . because of offenses. See Matthew, xviii, 7. 

131, 2. The judgments of the Lord. Psalms, xix, 9. 

Questions and Topics for Study 

I, Find in Schouler's, or some other, history of the United States 
an account of the second inauguration of Abraham Lincoln. 2. Which 
is greater, this address or that delivered at Gettysburg? Why? 
Learn the last paragraph by heart. 

LAST PUBLIC ADDRESS 

This address was delivered to a party of serenaders at the White 
House a day or two after Lincoln's return from Richmond in April, 



Notes and Comment 169 

1865. The great work of reconstruction had already begun — but 
was to be finished, alas, by men with less of wisdom and magnanimity 
than Abraham Lincoln. This speech is invested with a certain added 
interest by the fact that only three days later the President was laid 
low by the hand of an assassin. 



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